By ANNE GIBSON
Ten of the 12 bulk retail stores at AMP Asset Management's $180 million Botany Town Centre development have been leased, months before the buildings are finished.
Dust is flying on the South Auckland site as building of the first phase gets under way.
Both the bulk stores and the town centre are due to be finished by Easter next year. More than 100 construction workers are on the site in Manukau City, south of Ti Rakau Drive.
AMP has already leased 10 of the bulk stores, which make up a significant part of the project on the 17.6ha site. Development manager Mike Geale will not announce the names of the new tenants as yet but expects to be able to do so soon.
The bulk stores range in size from 600 sq m to 2000 sq m. The larger stores are almost half the size of a rugby field.
AMP takes its strip retailing precinct to smaller-scale shop owners at an event it has organised at Greenlane's Expo Centre tomorrow. This leasing launch will unveil the town square area to around 350 people involved in the retailing sector, with information packs and AMP staff on hand to explain the project.
The marketing catch-cry "size does matter" is being used at this leasing launch.
The Botany Town Centre project office moves on-site at Easter, from its headquarters in the West Plaza building in central Auckland.
"We believe in the location and we want to be where the action is," Geale said, adding that tenants wanted to be able to see where their shops would be, take photographs and envisage their premises.
Population growth in the region had already outstripped previous forecasts, he said.
"Growth has been 30 per cent faster than was forecast."
AMP had used predictions from Statistics New Zealand in its marketing brochure on demographics.
"In late 1998, it was anticipated that the population would reach 210,000 by the year 2011 through uniform growth of 3 per cent per annum across the region," the brochure says.
Marketing material shows the project drawing on a number of surrounding suburbs including Manukau City, East Tamaki, Howick, Pakuranga, Highland Park, Papatoetoe, Otahuhu, Mt Wellington and Meadowlands.
Included in the project is the biggest Farmers department store in Auckland, 11/2 times the size of a rugby field. A New World supermarket is also included.
A Farmers Home Centre and Warehouse are currently trading in buildings on Ti Rakau Drive. However, these buildings are not part of the AMP development. Farmers would move from this Home Centre to its new premises within the AMP development, Geale said.
Around $2 million was being spent on landscaping the entire area, which would include mature native trees, he said.
The project was partially a response to dissatisfaction with traditional shopping malls, he said. Although the Botany Town Centre included a mall, its centre provided strip shopping and angle parking for cars as well as the large-format stores.
The town centre drive is described in marketing material as "a street for people and vehicles, the main street with icon retailers, cafes and restaurants.
The traditional streetscape includes flower beds, shade trees, benches, ornamental lampposts, suspended verandahs and decorative paving."
United States designer Altoon & Porter has joined New Zealand architect firm Hames Sharley to design the project.
After four months of market research conducted in the local community, design work began. Of the 160,000 people in the area, more than 700 were polled on what they sought from a shopping centre.
Geale said the overriding theme to emerge was that the population in the corridor between Manukau City and Howick lacked any real community heart. On top of that, a third of retail spending was going out of the region, disadvantaging local retailers.
Building spirit as well as stores
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