One of Watermark Plaza’s developers, Nigel McKenna, has bought the neighbouring Viaduct Basin site on the Auckland waterfront to erect a 68-unit apartment building, to be called The Quays.
Demolition had already started before McKenna completed the transaction to take over the site from Newpark Pacific, which had the first design done for Watermark. He is buying the leasehold site from Viaduct Harbour Holdings and the old building now being demolished from Fletcher Challenge and expects to have it ready for a construction start early in the New Year.
The $30 million development should be finished by the time of the America’s Cup at the end of next year and will have a ground floor of retail outlets suited to that sort of event – service-related shops such as health goods, a chemist and satellite bank, a deli and bakery, upmarket café and restaurants. McKenna is targeting owner-occupiers and people wanting to manage their own investment apartment rather than the serviced apartment market for this development, which will sit alongside the $52 million Watermark Plaza at the city end of the Viaduct Basin.
Watermark Plaza will be operated by Australian listed company Mirvac, which developed the Quay West apartment building on the corner of Albert St and Customs St and manages about half its units. McKenna is in a joint venture with Greg Wilkinson through Plaza Development on the Watermark Plaza project and has scored financial baking from Blue Star Group’s chief executive, Eric Watson. But he said yesterday he had sold about $8 million of apartments in The Quays and was financing it himself.
Most of the units will have one bedroom with a study or two bedrooms, with a few three-bedroom units and two penthouses. Pricing would range from the low $200,000s to the high $500,000s. He is retaining one penthouse but has sold the other for more than $1 million.
McKenna says the apartments are reasonably sized at 50 to 200 sqm, with most around 100 sqm. “They’re good-sized, well proportioned, livable units, geared for living in, and I’ve upgraded all the acoustic standards in the building.”
He says the project will be launched on the market in the New Year.
McKenna is also involved in several other city projects. His management company, Promanco Kenman, is project manager from developer Andrew Krukziener’s perspective of the Metropolis apartment project on the old courthouse site. McKenna announced an apartment development last month on Scotia Pl, at the top of Queen St, and begun marketing a 32-unit terraced housing project on The Strand a fortnight ago.
Half the units sold in the first week and it is likely to be the first Quay Park residential project outside the station to be completed.
