Apartment mogul joins mayor in blasting ‘rapacious money grubbing’ fringe developers

Wednesday, 21 February 2024

The Greenhouse apartment building on Pollen Street in Ponsonby is said to be the tallest brick building in New Zealand.

Ockham co-founder Mark Todd has given a strongly worded critique of developers in rural South Auckland who rely on zoning changes and create urban sprawl.
Mayor Wayne Brown was also critical, saying the council would end up effectively subsidising development in Drury due to infrastructure cost.
The comments were made at a glitzy opening event for Ockham’s highly anticipated Ponsonby apartment building, The Greenhouse.

A prominent apartment mogul has joined Auckland’s mayor in taking aim at developers who create subdivisions on the city’s rural edges, allegedly to make a quick buck.

Ockham’s Mark Todd invited Mayor Wayne Brown to a glamorous opening ceremony for the The Greenhouse building in Ponsonby, a flagship project for the company.

The building contains 97 apartments ranging in price from $780,000 to $4.5 million. The façade is made of 150,000 handmade glazed green bricks painstakingly transported from north of Venice in Italy.

From left, Ockham co-founder Mark Todd, Mayor Wayne Brown and architect Tania Wong.

Brown, who cut the ribbon, applauded Todd on having built the architectural marvel in the city centre instead of adding to expanding urban sprawl.

“The more residents in the CBD, the better. We actually have all the roads and the infrastructure here, as opposed to Drury where if we’re not careful we’ll be paying to subsidise,” Brown said.

“When you have growth in our city [at the edge], the government collects more GST and tax, but the council, all we get is more cost.”

Todd was also passionate in his views that development should be focused in the central city, rather than in the rural south, when speaking to a reporter.

“We have no shortage of high density land. We don’t want to be developing in fu…..g Drury, it’s so wrong.

“All the money [there] is in rezoning the land, and building the houses is an afterthought, and the city is left picking up the legacy of bullshit development.”

The mayor says the council's hands are tied as it's having to bow to the Government's push for greater housing intensification.

Todd was referring to developers who buy land in Auckland’s future urban zones at a low price and then apply for a plan change to make it’s zoning available for housing development, substantially increasing its value.

“And, it’s all those rapacious money grubbing … those big old developers …you know who they are,” he said.

The comments follow three of New Zealand’s biggest developers, Oyster Capital, Fulton Hogan and Kiwi Property, having successfully applied to collectively rezone 330 hectares of land in East Drury. The development will be the size of Napier.

The council had opposed the plan changes on the grounds it would be left to foot the bill for $1 billion in infrastructure, but ultimately dropped it’s legal appeal.

None of those firms chose to comment on the critique when approached by Stuff.

A Kiwi Property spokesperson previously told Stuff that investment in infrastructure naturally follow population growth, not the other way around.

'It would be inefficient and unusual to build all the roads, schools, hospitals, stormwater and other civic amenities for a city of 60,000 inhabitants, when just a fraction of those people currently live in the area and years before the infrastructure will be required.'

Meanwhile, Todd said there was plenty of room for new, taller developments around train stations in the central city.

The Greenhouse apartment building on Pollen Street in Ponsonby was opened by the Mayor of Auckland Wayne Brown on 16 February 2023. Ockham co-founder Mark Todd said it had been a once in a career project.

The National Policy Statement on Urban Development (NPS-UD) allows six-storey apartment buildings within a 10-minute walk of rapid transit stops by right.

Todd said there was a century’s worth of development to be had along the eight train stations between Grafton and Avondale in the west, as well as Meadowbank and Glen Innes in the east.

“I don’t care if Drury has got a train station,.. that’s not where the focus should be, they should say if you want to be a property developer, you’re not doing farms any more.”

Todd said he had lengthy meetings with the new housing minister Chris Bishop about the issue last year, but the message hadn’t seemed to have gotten through.

“I’m fully active in lobbying, I’ve got a consultant in Wellington, and I was on the previous minister’s housing advisory panel, but no one listens.”

Bishop has previously promised a package of new laws nicknamed, the “going for housing growth” package.

But, it’s anticipated the legislation will require councils to either opt into new standards that will see intensification in suburbia, known as MDRS, or zone for 30 years of growth at the edges.

At the ribbon cutting ceremony, Mayor Brown said the Government seemed to want “greenfield developments everywhere” before the inner city had been “fully developed”.

“[The Greenhouse] shows that we can live happily alongside commercial activities. Our suburbs are dreary houses and nothing else, it’s not a place where you would [want to] live in some ways.”

Ockham, meanwhile, has built 481 apartments in the last 12 months, according to its chief executive.

However, late last year, it halted plans for a building named The Feynman in Grey Lynn after sales were too low to make the project viable.

Todd said he had learned some lessons from marketing the Greenhouse - that buyers on the high end of the market don’t want small floor plans and they are willing to pay the price.

“I’ve never done a high end, and it turns out it’s much easier to sell a $4.5 million apartment.”

One thing he has no regrets about is keeping the substantial rooftop penthouse of The Greenhouse for himself.

“I’m going to live there until I die in it,” he said.