Second Union Square building welcomed to CBD

Saturday, 29 April 2023

As the autumn sun came down upon Hamilton, its luminaries; business leaders, local politicians, arts figures and others gathered on the rooftop of the newly completed Union Square car park building.

Drinks were on ice, and canapés circulated as the guests of commercial and public developers who, like them, are sculpting Hamilton into a modern city regaled each other with recent goings-on.

Rhys Harvey, Foster Construction’s development director and the overseer of the Union Square precinct, said that the opening of the 327 bay car park building marked the “about the 40% point” of the project.

Harvey says that the rooftop bar style event was in lieu of events hampered by Covid.

“We’ve had many milestones with Union Square since we kicked it off, but we were always caught with Covid lockdowns and not being able to celebrate.”

The 100 or so guests of Union Square that had gathered on the rooftop to enjoy a new and previously unseen perspective on the ever expanding city included: Mercury Energy, Chow Hill architects, Rabo bank and Strictly Adult sex-shop, among others.

Harvey explained that the seven-storey car parking building would in time be hidden from view by an L-shaped office building with an east facing elevation and access to the precinct’s internal courtyard.

“The building will wrap around it [the car park], so on Alexander St and back in towards the main concourse.”

Not necessarily at the helm of Hamilton’s transformation, but certainly on the Bridge, Harvey said humbly: “I’m not sure if I would’ve expressed it that way, but it’s certainly exciting, but it’s also a big responsibility. From a design point of view something of this size can reshape how a city operates, right?”

“So it will have a draw to the southern end of the city. As I say we’re about 40% of the way through, and we’re consented for 23,000sqm of office space. So it’s a relative responsibility to get in right.”

From the seventh floor one could visualise the city’s expansion both up and out.

West of the new building sits the recently competed ACC complex developed by Waikato-Tainui.

Adjacent to the river, the two cranes completing the Waikato Regional Theatre’s concrete raft foundation stood completing their last lifts of the day.

And in the distance, beyond the university, one could make out the steel tufts of roofs at the new inland port being fastened into the Waikato plains.