$90m for new Long Bay road and village

A developer is building a new $70 million seaside village in north Auckland - and a $20 million road to connect it.

Todd Property has been building at Long Bay since 2010 and today announced plans for the ‘‘heart of the community’’ - about 28 businesses including restaurants, supermarket and retail.

The developer was also partnering with Auckland Transport to build a road to feed into the popular Long Bay Regional Park, as part of the development.

Todd Property managing director Evan Davies said while plans for a village had always been thrown around, this was the first time they had been finalised.

The village was due for completion in 2019 and Davies said they would try to coordinate this with the new road opening.

‘‘While its primary objective is to provide that new community heart at Long Bay, given it’s a seaside village adjacent to the most popular park in the region, it will be quite a destination,’’ he said.

The building of the ‘‘$20 million plus’’, roughly 1-kilometre road was being funded by both Todd Property and Auckland Transport. Once linked to a new council road, it would act as a second entrance to the regional park, alleviating the traffic queues seen in the peak of summer.

‘‘The park is an extremely popular recreational facility across the region and that level of popularity with restricted access has caused issues in the past,’’ Davies said.

The new road would also link to the existing Glenvar Rd and concerns had previously been raised about whether that would handle increased traffic flows.

Davies said while that fell outside the company’s development area, they would support improvements to the road.

Todd’s general manager of land development Stephen Martin said there weren’t any concerns around whether the new road would be able to handle increased traffic flows over time.

‘‘It’s been designed and built to handle the Long Bay area.’’

Martin expected the new road to take about 4500 vehicles per day, alleviating pressure on roads around Long Bay College and primary school. He said the cost was relatively high because the site was ‘‘geotechnically challenging’’.

Since work started at Long Bay, more than 450 homes have been built. Another 1700 are expected by 2025.

TODD PROPERTY The village will include 28 retail spaces, a supermarket and some apartments