Costco a game-changer out west
Big milestones ahead for Auckland’s newest town centre
Is this where Ikea will make its New Zealand debut? Will Costco really sell fuel for 30 per cent below market prices? Will it be worth paying a $60 membership? And when will the new Bunnings be finished?
These are some of the questions from those in and around Auckland’s ever-changing $2 billion Westgate, the first new town centre created in Auckland since Manukau some decades ago and Albany, somewhat more recently.
Costco’s June announcement to open at Westgate in 2021 and sell fuel 20 to 30 per cent cheaper than elsewhere could be a game-changer for this new northwestern hub.
Ikea is often alongside or near Costco overseas so expectations are that the furniture and homeware retailer might pick the fast-growing northwest where thousands of houses are rising around Westgate and in the area up to Hobsonville Pt.
But when will Westgate be finished?
“Never,” says Mark Gunton, chairman, founder and owner of NZ Retail Property Group that created Westgate on the city’s northwestern fringes. “By the time you get to the end, you’re at the start again. That’s the way of towns, they’re everchanging, ever-evolving. They don’t stop changing. That’s the way Westgate will always be.”
Gunton, who has revealed a list of new businesses opening soon, hoped for a new motorway connection to ease congestion and expressed frustration about lack of an Auckland Council transport hub, the subject of current litigation between his business and the council.
Westgate is now the old 11ha site of Countdown, The Warehouse and other shops and offices and the new 57ha site where so many new businesses, including Costco, are opening.
The two parts are separated by Fred Taylor Dr, yet you can’t drive from the new to the old centre by crossing that key arterial route, a bone of contention between Gunton, who wants the link opened, and Auckland Transport, which demands he remove advertising to make a safe transit.
As a sign of how rapidly the area is changing, Gunton pointed to the Palmers Garden Centre. The site is about 5 years old and looks smart and new, yet the centre is moving to a new
site and a new build, because of the Mitre 10 MEGA’s rapid expansion.
The graphic shows the location of new tenancies.
Highlights are:
● Residential development alongside new town centre, with approximately 10,000 new homes planned on ex-farmland. Some 200sq m sites selling for $398,000.
● Maki St upgrade: new paving, planting, landscaping to rejuvenate this key central spine, creating new streetscape but parking/traffic disruption.
● New Bunnings Warehouse will be NZ’s biggest. There will be 745sq m of retail tenancies as well, making this complex 16,290sq m on completion, with 318 car parks.
● Mall-style shops with what Gunton terms “significant office accommodation”
By the time you get to the end, you’re at the start again. That’s the way of towns, they’re everchanging. Mark Gunton, NZ Retail Property Group Westgate versus Auckland Council B3
planned, probably in towers in Westgate’s heart.
● High-rise town centre apartment living that Gunton indicated could be on the same scale and style as that planned at Mt Wellington’s Sylvia Park and Takapuna’s Smales Farm, perhaps 30 levels tall.
● A mix of convenience and bulk retail with what Gunton calls “residential overlays” — meaning apartment-style housing will be incorporated.
● Costco Wholesale — the world’s second-largest retailer after Walmart, with annual revenue equivalent to New Zealand’s total GDP — is set to open in 2021 selling groceries, electronics, homewares, sports equipment, shoes, clothing, convenience food — everything from coffins to giant teddy bears;
● Costco fuel station, selling 20-30 per cent cheaper, a drawcard for the membership-only scheme, which might cost about $60.
● AS Colour, a clothing or garment business whose range includes T-shirts, singlets, shirts and sweatshirts. The business designs and makes “quality basics” and says it hand-picks factories with safe, fair, legal and humane working conditions.
● Business park: industrial-style operations will be located here, alongside their offices and showrooms in what is a growing commercial sector of the market.
● New extended Mitre 10 — 1.6ha on completion.
● Proposed motorway connection; long-overdue infrastructure link to Northwestern Motorway.