Morningside’s new dawn
How did this formerly industrial suburb become so cool, asks Marta Steeman.
The once relatively invisible suburb of Morningside is now on the radar of Aucklanders. On the city fringe, it is home to light industry and various small factories surrounded by fairly expensive bungalows and villas in the neighbouring suburbs of Kingsland, Mt Eden, Mt Roskill and Western Springs.
About four kilometres southwest of the city, Morningside appears to be on the same gentrification journey as Ponsonby and Grey Lynn were several decades ago.
So how did an unremarkable industrial neighbourhood become a must-go-to hospitality destination?
Auckland designer and selfdescribed ‘‘fake architect’’ Nat Cheshire (who runs Cheshire Architects) and friends are at the heart of its transformation.
A year ago they took a derelict curtain manufacturing factory, creatively upgraded it and converted it into various-sized modern and appealing office and hospitality spaces and then carefully hand-picked the tenant mix to achieve a cool vibe and complementarity of offerings.
They are no novices. The group has worked extensively together on high-profile Auckland urban regeneration and CBD redevelopment projects such as Britomart and the City Works Depot.
This time it was their money on the line in an area that had only one well-known hospitality business, Crave Cafe, owned and run by a collective who set out to create a community focal point and place to connect.
The group comprised Nat and his architect father Pip Cheshire, Britomart Hospitality Group’s Rod Ballenden and Nick McCaw, and investors Jeremy Priddy (of Britomart developers Cooper and Company), Blair Wolfgram and Paul Gibbard.
Nat Cheshire said the buildings were of far lesser quality than the ones they had been working with in the Auckland CBD but nonetheless they were excited and challenged by their grit and idiosyncrasies.
‘‘Ultimately I think that what we have got is a development that feels like it has grown out of its place rather than just being imported to it,’’ Cheshire, who lives in Morningside, said.
‘‘It feels organic rather than artificial and that’s really important for us. It’s really important that the thing had an authenticity and integrity within its community.’’
The $6 million Morningside development opened in November 2018 and hasn’t looked back.
Upstairs, tenants include media company The Spinoff and tech company Parkable, who occupy the open plan spaces, along with leading fashion designer Juliette Hogan’s bridal studio.
The ground floor is all hospitality and includes dessert cafe Miann, the KIND eatery focusing on plant-based food, Electric Chicken, Bo’s Dumplings, a tiny brewery Morningcider and a family tavern, The Morningside Tavern.
The development also features a stunning 450 square metre glasshouse, 10m high, surrounded by oaks, and designed as a community function centre.
‘‘You can launch a car there. You can get married there. You can have a party for 200 or 300 people there.’’
Cheshire said putting the different businesses together gave each of them a lot of support. On their own the small hospitality businesses would struggle.
The Morningside development had taken what Crave started – reinventing a suburb – and ‘‘rammed it home’’, Cheshire said.
What the group had learnt over and over again at Britomart was
‘‘It’s really important that the thing had an authenticity and integrity within its community.’’
Nat Cheshire
that ‘‘critical mass wins’’.
‘‘As long as you are curating that critical mass and not just signing up whoever’s going to pay the most rent then you get back what you put into it.’’
Increasingly, that was what Auckland looked like – pockets of real estate like Britomart or the City Works Depot, North Wharf, Ponsonby Central or Morningside.
Morningside offered locals an alternative to going to town or to Ponsonby. Instead they could pop down the road and get some dessert with their friends.
‘‘I think that the way Morningside has been devoured both by Morningsiders and people coming from further afield tells us really clearly that it’s a model, if it is done really sensitively and well, that could thrive all over the city,’’ Cheshire said.
‘‘What it means is that not only those who live in Morningside but also those who live in suburbs immediately around it have a centre for their neighbourhood and a kind of social collider for the neighbourhood, so that when I do go down there I bump into Jackie who lives 10 blocks away but who I only see once a year. Now I bump into her once every fortnight.
‘‘There’s a sense that the community has a centre. That was really palpable in the big Christmas street party,’’ he said.
Commercial real estate agent Alex Wefers of JLL said that for years Morningside was not on anybody’s radar, then all of a sudden industrial properties were being turned to cool uses.
The rezoning by Auckland Council’s Unitary Plan of the area to mixed use had attracted developers.
Last year JLL sold three industrial properties in Morningside and these were being redeveloped by leading Auckland architects Fearon Hay as three architecturally-designed office spaces with glass facades.
Morningside office space was easily $100 a square metre cheaper than Ponsonby and now it had a ‘‘cool’’ hospitality hub to offer prospective tenants.
Its own train station provided great transport links and those would be even better when the huge City Rail Link project was completed, Wefers said.
Other developments in Morningside include homewares retail giant Briscoes building its new head office and retail stores in Taylors Rd.
And new Auckland hospitality business The Beer Spot plans to be set up in Morningside in May on New North Rd offering 40 varieties of beer made by small breweries. It established first on the North Shore nearly three years ago, expanding to Huapai in January.