‘This is the Auckland that is coming’: Ockham’s new Pt Chevalier high rise

Friday, 19 September 2025

Ockham Residential’s two new high-rise apartment blocks near Pt Chevalier in Auckland are the type of housing the city needs and represent its future, Auckland’s mayor says.

“It is the type of development that is good for this city. We need to celebrate it: This is the Auckland that is coming, it is the Auckland that I’m proud to push for.”

The apartment development company and its partner Marutūāhu, a five-iwi collective, officially opened its Toi and Whetū buildings, which are made up of 65 and 77 homes respectively, on Thursday.

They are the first two buildings in the partnership’s Maungārongo development, and are part of the new Auckland suburb rising on the grounds of the old Carrington Hospital.

Toi is a seven-storey, green brick block with apartments ranging from studios through to one, two and three bedroom options, and a residents’ lounge.

Its next door neighbour, Whetū, is a ten-storey, red brick block with a range of different apartment sizes, and it is a build-to-rent offering.

The two buildings are 400m from Pt Chevalier village, and close to the Mt Albert shops, several train stations and the Northwestern bike path.

As the development progresses amenities including a supermarket, a commercial gym, a swimming pool, a daycare, a hospitality precinct, gardens and commercial spaces will also be built.

Auckland mayor Wayne Brown, who opened the buildings with Housing Minister Chris Bishop, said they were the start of a development that animated Auckland’s ambition to be a compact and connected city.

Mixed use developments providing high-quality, sustainable, medium density housing for Aucklanders were crucial, and the build-to-rent component offered people the chance to live in homes they would not have otherwise been able to, he said.

“The demand is here for these sorts of homes, and we need to respond to that demand.

“This will be a high-density community but it’s balanced by the network of green spaces around the buildings, and an emphasis on shared spaces to eat, work and play together.”

It was good the Ockham-Marutūāhu partnership had taken the opportunity to build in an area where infrastructure was ready for development, he said.

“It costs the ratepayers less and it’s more sensible. There are people who want Auckland to go out further, but where developers get ahead of infrastructure bad results occur and it costs a lot.”

Brown said the Maungārongo masterplan showed good planning had been done around the needs of those who would live in the development, and it was localism in its truest sense.

Just about everything somebody would need or want was within a leisurely stroll, he said.

Housing Minister Chris Bishop said New Zealand needed more mixed use development across its urban areas, and more homes as that would drive housing costs down over time, and make housing more affordable.

The Ockham-Marutūāhu partnership had led to 720 new homes in Auckland, and 142 at Toi and Whetu, many of them affordable and bought by first home buyers, and in locations with high amenity and access to transport, he said.

“That is precisely what we need to be doing as cities, and as a country. Developing areas where people want to live by enabling more efficient land use to create safe and vibrant neighbourhoods.

“Maungārongo is what building a community is all about - it is not just about the homes, it is about what you put around it.”

Bishop said it was still too hard to build houses, and developments like Maungārongo, but the government was working to make it easier.

The Maungārongo development was a great example of the Crown, iwi and the private sector working together to provide homes under the Land for Housing programme, he said.

Over 1000 people were employed on the construction of Toi and Whetū, and the buildings had been delivered ahead of target, he added.

In Toi, studio apartments are selling from $550,000, one-bedrooms from $700,000,two bedrooms from $900,000, and three bedrooms from $885,000. To date, 24 had been sold, and people would be moving into the two buildings from October.

Toi and Whetū were the 20th and 21st apartment buildings Ockham had built in Auckland, and the developer had now delivered a total of 1398 homes.

The two new buildings were the first the developer had completed since it opened The Greenhouse in Ponsonby early last year.

Marutūāhu chairman Paul Majurey said Toi and Whetū were the first of about 30 buildings with mixed used amenities in the Maungārongo development that would be built over 15 to 20 years.

It was a generational task, but as time went on the city building done would change the fabric and face of Auckland, and leave the city a legacy, he said.