KEY POINTS:
Auckland is being offered a luxury hotel on its waterfront towering four times over the allowable height limit at the historic Britomart precinct.
Britomart development company Cooper and Company are going public on Monday with plans for a 175-room hotel, which chief executive Matthew Cockram claims will be the most luxurious in New Zealand.
The hotel, on the site of the rundown Seafearers Building on Quay St, will make a significant addition to Britomart and help Auckland to attract wealthy tourists, he said.
The neighbouring Quay and Altrans historic buildings will be incorporated into the hotel, which could be completed for the 2011 Rugby World Cup at a cost of $120 million to $150 million. The company is in talks with an international hotel operator.
But the plans are at odds with strict height controls to ensure the historic Britomart precinct is not dominated by new buildings. The building would also shadow a public square.
When the Auckland City Council handed Britomart to the Bluewater Group (now Cooper and Company) in 2004, company principal Peter Cooper said the aim was to create a "low-rise heritage-based precinct" integrated with the Britomart transport centre.
The existing transport centre and historic precinct redevelopment followed a huge public backlash to a mass of high-rise buildings at Britomart favoured by former Auckland City Mayor Les Mills in the 1990s. The proposed 21-storey hotel at Britomart would be about the same height as the 19-level HSBC building further down Quay St at 1 Queen St but lower than the 26-level PricewaterhouseCoopers Tower, also in Quay St.
A private plan change, being notified on Monday, would allow a building of up to 59m on Quay St and 85m on Tyler St as of right and the ability to seek resource consent to build up to 79m on Quay St and 105m on Tyler St.
Mr Cockram said the company could not build a hotel of the required standard within the current height limit of 24m for the Seafearers site.
If the plan change failed, a mixed-use commercial building would take its place. "Even if the plan change is successful, Britomart will be predominantly low-rise and heritage-based as envisaged in our agreement with Auckland City Council," he said.
Asked if Cooper and Company wanted to breach the height rules on other sites at Britomart, Mr Cockram said it had no plans "at the moment".
Margot McRae, of Devonport Heritage, said the hotel was out of scale with the vision for Britomart and should be rejected by the council.
"Most people can see the importance of the historic buildings at Britomart. This hotel would be a tragedy for Auckland."
ON THE WEB
www.cooperandcompany.org or www.aucklandcity.govt.nz
