This Auckland town centre is a bit crap, but that could soon change

Friday, 19 January 2024

A new New World supermarket is coming to Point Chevalier, on Great North Rd.

From a new supermarket to a possible library and services hub, Auckland’s Point Chevalier appears on the cusp of a transformation, but experts agree it has so far been neglected.

It's within 10 minutes of the CBD and has a median house price of $1.5 million, yet visitors are greeted by graffiti, ageing retail and used car lots.

The predicament of Point Chev - as it’s affectionately known - is encapsulated by Auckland Council’s quandary of what to do with its decrepit leaky library building which sits prominently in the centre square despite being closed for over a year.

“Literally, it's f…ed. It was built in 1989 and would be millions to restore,” Albert Eden Local Board chair Margi Watson told a community meeting in Mt Albert.

Watson said if the board was going to spend that kind of money, it ought to include a whole hub for services. It resolved in November to investigate redeveloping the site into a hub or finding a new one.

Asked whether she felt the town centre was underutilised, Watson agreed it was a bit crap.

“With a residential development proposing up to 6000 homes on Carrington Rd, new and improved facilities can’t come soon enough to service the expected growth,” she said.

Point Chevalier is a well off inner city Auckland suburb, but its town centre has lacked private investment.

The local library has sat closed and undeveloped for sometime.

Commercial real estate expert David Burley, of Colliers, said Point Chevalier may have fallen off the radar because it was particularly difficult for a developer to buy a big enough site there and revamp it.

The block of shops is filled with individually owned and tenanted units, meaning a developer would have to buy in piecemeal portions until they had a large enough footprint to work with.

“It would take a group of unit holders to get together and agree on a price and an offering that reflects a land rate. Buying on the value of the rent would be cost prohibitive.

“I lived on Huia Rd, and always in conversation it would come up that Point Chev was ripe for the picking. The popularity of Daily Bread [bakery] shows how good it can be.”

The local mall is full of individually owned outlets.

Burley said a time might come where owners decide the buildings they’re just too expensive to continue to maintain, and decide to sell.

The local supermarket carpark is owned by the council.

“It’s hard to say when that will happen, but it’s going to take a developer to get in there and take it by the scruff of its neck.”

The main street shops look tired and rundown in areas.

That’s where Eke Panuku, Auckland Council’s development arm, could theoretically play a role. It’s undertaken “urban regeneration” projects in several centres, including Avondale, Panmure and Onehunga.

In Point Chev, the council owns the large carpark space behind KFC as well as the square around the library across the road. It also owns the supermarket carpark and a residential plot next door which currently houses a community centre.

Those substantial landholdings could lend themselves to a mixed-use redevelopment where a private developer would get a long-term land lease to build apartments, along with an agreement to improve public amenity in the square.

There are still a lot of empty or undeveloped plots, left untouched for months and even years.

Any development might also include new commercial space around the supermarket and the arcade, with Eke Panuku potentially managing stakeholder relationships with current occupants.

Design and place general manager Gyles Bendall explained that Eke Panuku looks for sites where the council owns land and where there is a commercially viable opportunity for a private partnership.

Foodstuffs intends to open a New World in the area on Great North Rd.

“I grew up in central west, and I love Point Chev. It’s a good location, being a short trip to the city centre, and has high-frequency buses, walking and cycling infrastructure and parks.”

“From a commercial point of view, it's also in the inner ring around the city centre,” Bendall said.

However, Bendall warns that so far, it's not at all on Eke Panuku’s radar. In fact, the agency is already fully committed with projects for some years and its future finances aren’t yet clear.

The Harlequin bar and the Barrels and Bottles liquor store are also possibly being sold.

Yet, Point Chev is already undergoing something of an organic regeneration with the announcement of a New World supermarket on Great North Rd where the RSA used to be.

Several new housing blocks are being built in the neighbourhood, including this one across the road from the ‘square’.

The site will have a supermarket with 2000sqm of office space above, 170sqm of further retail and an underground carpark with 121 spaces.

Foodstuffs spokesperson Emma Wooster said the company had been eying up Point Chev for some years, but it had been an “unpredictable and lengthy” process.

Some aspects of the development are yet to be determined with Foodstuffs still working out the details of an agreement to include clubrooms for the RSA, which the RSA has reportedly been vacillating on.

Either way, the prospect of the supermarket has already had flown on effects for Point Chev.

Stuff understands that owners of the site next door, which is home to the Harlequin bar and the Barrels & Bottles liquor store, are nearing the end of negotiations to sell.

It's been listed before and marketed as a redevelopment opportunity but failed to move. It was put up again in November and marked as sold within weeks.

Land records show it has been owned by the Arora family, who are prominent and controversial in the liquor industry, while there is also a caveat on the property placed by Grant and Nicholas Chester of Chester’s Plumbing.

The site on the other side of the supermarket, formerly Magnum Motors, is also up for sale and comes with an approved resource consent for 177 apartments and three commercial units.

The local board, meanwhile, has found a space to lease in the town centre for an interim library. A brief announcement was made in October, but it couldn’t actually say where the library was.

Stuff understands this was because the space already had a tenant and the council was still in the process of getting them to vacate.