Auckland Eyesores: What’s going on at the desolate downtown Seascape tower?

Saturday, 1 March 2025

The unfinished Seascape apartment tower was set to be Auckland’s tallest apartment building.

Construction stopped on downtown Auckland’s Seascape tower last August.

Prior to its development, neighbours of the new apartment tower had expansive harbour views and all-day sunshine.

Now they look at the shell of the unfinished, 187-metre building.

A construction site where progress has been stalled for six months on Auckland’s tallest apartment building is “depressing” and “yucky“, neighbours say.

“It’s quite depressing, in the winter especially. When we look out, all you see is the unfinished building, we can’t see the sky because of it,” said Judy Rawhiti, who has lived in an adjacent apartment building in downtown Gore Street for 20 years.

Residents in apartments next to the stalled Seascape development in downtown Auckland look onto an unfinished, empty building site.

Despite being on her building’s body corporate committee, she said she heard nothing about the 56-storey development that now blocks her view and casts shade on her apartment.

“When we bought off the plans, we were told nothing could shade us for more than three hours a day,” Rawhiti said.

The sun no longer makes it into her living room that used to be bathed in sunshine in the middle of the day. And where she previously had an expansive view of the harbour, Rawhiti now looks onto the shell of the empty, unfinished building.

Construction stopped at the Customs Street site in August 2024.

The 187-metre Seascape development promised “ultra-premium residences” with “breathtaking views”, but construction on the $300 million apartment tower came to a grinding halt in August, when a dispute came to a head between the developer and the construction company.

The abrupt stop to construction, has left the building envelope unfinished, and also impacted nearby businesses.

Shelly Wu has owned Sierra Cafe on Fort Street for 13 years. As the closest cafe to the site, she said workers came from 6 o’clock in the morning.

“They started with coffee, but they came for everything, breakfast, morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea. For me, they spent quite a lot of money.”

Wu said staff numbers at the building site had been reducing since around April last year and what remains at the empty site “looks yucky”.

At nearby restaurant and bar, Chargrill, manager Pam Kaur said business had dropped by about $500 a day since construction stopped.

Workers had also come there for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, spending at least $500 per day, Kaur said.

“For us, it’s very sad. We are a small business, we’ve been struggling since Covid. But we can’t do anything about it.”

Is there an Auckland eyesore in your neighbourhood? Email erin.johnson@stuff.co.nz

The unfinished Seascape tower on Customs Street East, casts shade onto adjacent apartments.

Workers at another nearby business described the incomplete site as an “eyesore”.

“You have these high end Britomart buildings, and then this. It would be nice if something could be done with it.”

What is happening at the site?

Developer Shundi Customs entered into a construction agreement with China Construction NZ in September 2017.

Early on a February morning, metal clanging rings out from the downtown construction site.

Despite the presence of a towering, bright yellow crane, stark against the blue sky, there’s little else happening.

Through a gap in locked fencing, a sole worker in a bright orange hard hat can be seen moving about on the ground level of what is supposed to become the 221-apartment building.

High end stores, Tiffany and Chanel, sit across the road from the empty construction site in the Britomart precinct.

But there’s no sign of construction, just more clanging.

The owner of the site, Shundi Customs Limited, part of Shanghai-based international developer Shundi Group, entered into a construction agreement with China Construction NZ Limited, (in turn, part of construction conglomerate China State Construction Engineering Corp Ltd), in September 2017. But the relationship has soured.

Court documents show Shundi has paid CCNZ over $300 million for the project, but the companies went to adjudication where it was determined that Shundi should pay CCNZ around $33m.

When Shundi didn’t pay up, the CCNZ construction work was stopped.

Shundi asked the High Court to suspend the order for payment, until a judicial review could be heard of the adjudicator’s decision.

In his November judgment, High Court Justice Greg Blanchard said “the relationship between the parties has completely broken down” and ruled that Shundi still owes CCNZ $33m.

The judicial review is yet to be heard. Shundi has not responded to questions from Stuff and a China Construction worker referred questions to Shundi.

Companies Office chasing financial statements

Aucklanders have faced a block of construction hoardings at the Customs Street East site since 2017.

Meanwhile, the Companies Office is chasing the construction company for financial statements it has not filed.

China Construction New Zealand Limited (CCNZ) was referred to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s integrity and enforcement team in December 2023 for non-compliance, MBIE’s business registries national manager, Bolen Ng said.

“On 31 January 2025 an infringement notice was sent to an individual who was director at the time when the financial statements should have been filed,” Ng said.

CCNZ is required to file financial statements for the 2023 reporting period to business registries, also known as the Companies Office, but has not done so.

Earlier Problems

The project has not been plain sailing. In early 2017, there were concerns about Seascape’s fire safety plans, which were resolved with a redesign and new consent.

And concrete foundations in the five-storey deep basement required remediation, which was signed off by Auckland Council in 2021.

Marketed as the tallest residential tower in New Zealand, with apartments advertised from $990,000 to $11.2m, Seascape may be pipped at the post for that title.

Down the road, Precinct Properties has high hopes for the Downtown Carpark site where its plans include a 227m tower and has applied to Auckland Council for resource consent, and also has the project in the first round of Fast Track assessments.

Andrew Krukziener of Krukziener Properties, developed the 40-storey Metropolis in the late 1990s, which was briefly the tallest building in the country. Krukziener said large projects are difficult and complicated, and it would have been challenging to build Seascape over the Covid years when banks were reluctant to lend more money

Krukziener said time was critical to get the building closed in, and he hoped the Chinese government would look at assisting the developer to finish the project.

“Money will fix it.”