Subscribe to RSSSoho: Please No Giant Carpark
The dreadful massive big hole off Williamson Avenue in Ponsonby remains unwanted.
Today the receiver has put the Soho Square development site back on the market.
For a year still no buyer has been found.
The abandoned Soho excavation
The receivers’ statement says their focus on the property since appointment had been on adding value via improving the permissible development on the site. They say this was achieved in March this year when resource consent was granted for a mixed use development of 45,348sqm on the site, versus the previous consent of 32,286sqm when the site was offered to the market in early 2010.
The original $250m development announced in 2006 of the old DYC yeast factory site was going to contain office space, 35 retail shops, 53 apartments and over 1250 undercover car parks and a movie complex.
By the end of 2009 it was in receivership.
The plan had drawn mixed views from locals -critics were horrified at what it may turn the distinctive Ponsonby into, especially by providing so many car parks.
When cheeky locals turned it one day into a pretend swimming pool there were reports some of them later got a visit from police for trespass.
This is a sale worth monitoring. If a buyer can be found in these difficult times, it could certainly change Ponsonby. Surely some good use can be found for it.
A giant car parking building is not what we need.
And there is still no sign of anything happening with another large site - the Lion Breweries site in Khyber Pass near Grafton station.
LION: Its Khyber Pass factory was to have been re-developed
Last September, AMP gave its quest to develop the site and sold it back to the brewery.
In 2007 , it had been sold to AMP Capital Investors for $162 million to be redeveloped as high-end commercial, residential and retail development but AMP Capital Investors investment fund then announced it’s failed to secure capital funding for redevelopment – so Lion Nathan has bought it back.
12 Comments
The issue here is the carparks. I don’t think building height is such a big problem here, especially as it is almost the whole block and a ridge site. But it is always the thing that locals can understand and can imagine as a change.
1250 new car parks at this location is a nightmare Ponsonby Rd is already too full… how many new car movements a day does this cause when there is a functioning retail destination there?
Ideally this should be a mixed residential/commercial/retail location. I would be happy to see height benefits traded off for fewer carparks personally. Ponsonby with more locals and more jobs and more services, but fewer cars would be ideal.
What about a 9/11 memorial?
Reminds me of Wellington after the 80s crash. Holes in the ground. Monuments to paper tigers.
i reckon a underground subway station, just need to find a route for the line
@Joshua:
My own example for such a route http://i356.photobucket.com/albums/oo7/kalelovil/northwest1.jpg
I think the artists who turned it into a pool for an afternoon had it right!
My worry would be that since the basement is already there, it WILL become car parking. Bleargh!
Yeah. I think it is inevitable the development will have lots of carparks. what else are they going to use that big space underground for? They can’t create apartments or offices that have no natural light…
The world’s biggest squash court?…. actually a cinema or two would be great, I know it’s a tricky business these days, but every time i go to Rialto in Newmarket I see a room full of people from Ponsonby… Imagine if we could all walk to a Ponsonby one instead? Not need for windows….
Joshua, more likely an entrance to a new motorway project we haven’t heard about yet…
I liked the original development plan. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmWDG3mEoDo
Why did this fail? If anything maybe a bit too high.
DanC - Too high, looking at that video it looks great, we need more good intensification around the city.
overly capital intensive soulless disconnected ‘placeless’ place perched on a vast car park, didn’t stack up… in fact fell over. not what that location calls for.