First buildings to be bowled soon for new-look town centre
Transformative work in Northcote will begin in June to regenerate the Auckland suburb and make it a desirable place to work and live. Surrounded by well-heeled suburbs like Birkenhead, Glenfield, Highbury and Takapuna, there is a strong community feeling in Northcote’s town centre, but it’s gradually become a place that progress forgot, with the shopping centre, mostly built in the late 1950s, showing its age.
But from June, a decade-long project led by Eke Panuku, Auckland Council’s urban regeneration agency, will begin to lift Northcote town centre into the 21st century.
The first building to go will be a block on the corner of Kilham Ave and College Rd.
Eke Panuku chief executive David Rankin knows Northcote well, and says the modernisation is much-needed.
“I was brought up a kilometre from Northcote Town Centre as the crow flies,” Rankin said. “I was there in the early 60s, which was when it was nearly new, and for its day, Northcote was well planned.
“It was mostly shops, it originally had department stores, but over time the mall has stripped out a lot of that stuff. There hasn’t been a lot of fresh investment in Northcote.
“The council owned a lot of the land, and that made it hard for others to redevelop.
“In Northcote, we did a regeneration plan for the centre,” he added. “We did a master plan for how we’d like the centre to be, which showed a lot more residential, investment in food and beverage, retail and a bit of office. Plus a revamp of the current library and community centre.”
When Auckland Council was formed in 2010, one of its first big jobs was the Auckland Plan, to find a future direction for the city. A key part of that was trying to make better use of urban land, rather than the city continuing to spread outwards.
The Unitary Plan in 2015 enabled more development in existing suburbs, while there has been an emphasis by Auckland Council to improve public transport.
Eke Panuku looked at about a dozen town centres, mostly along rail lines or, in the case of Northcote and Takapuna, where there were already good bus services.
In places like Avondale, Panmure, Henderson, Old Papatoetoe and Manukau, there hasn’t been a lot of fresh investment, and apart from Manukau, buildings were one or two storeys high.
Eke Panuku is working from council land that is either not being used or is under-utilised, then sometimes adding to it by buying a neighbouring block, so there can be a bigger development.
That land is then sold to a developer, with an agreement on what they’ll build on it, with the focus on good design so that the site works well for future residents and also fits in with town centres.
Eke Panuku puts the money from the sale of the sites back into these locations, reinvesting in parks, laneways, playgrounds, community facilities and town squares.
It took three years and the Public Works Act to compulsorily acquire property in Northcote Town Centre, and Eke Panuku went to the market late last year to seek a development partner. Last week letters were sent to stakeholders in the centre, informing them that the first deconstruction work would be starting soon.
Helen Ho has been a volunteer in a charity shop in Northcote for 13 years, and thinks the town centre is looking tired, but that the lengthy process to get the redevelopment work approved had contributed to this.
“I’ve heard them talk about this for a long time, many years, but there weren’t any further steps, maybe because of Covid.
“The shopkeepers here, they didn’t do any renovations to their shops, so it always felt temporary.”
Jessica Pearless is a co-director at North Art, a public art facility in the town centre. She says it is moving to a nearby location in mid-January to make way for a new road, but worries about the gentrification of Northcote once the work is complete. She also feels there’s a charm to what Northcote is like now.
“It represents a community, and we think that’s exciting, and a lot of the artists we work with enjoy that we’re based like how Northcote currently is,” she said.
“We can also see the advantages of scaling up, and we’re fortunate to have been allocated a new gallery inside the new community hub that’s being built.
“What would be really unfortunate is if a lot of the idiosyncratic communities that have made Northcote what it is completely disappear.
“We don’t want to see complete gentrification of the place, because that’s what makes it interesting – the divergence in culture and opportunities for people to experience different things and different ways of living.”
Local councillor Chris Darby said it had taken a lot of work to get to this point.
“As a North Shore councillor, I have worked with Eke Panuku, the local board, the businesses there and the visioning for this place for a long time. We’re already seeing results. We’re seeing a new community develop there, and that community includes the existing community as well.
“I always identified Northcote town centre as a place of considerable potential that was not being realised,” Darby said.
“While it was very dear to a lot of people, it was staring at a horizon that was looking very different.
“It took a number of parties, including the Crown, through Kāinga Ora and private sector developers, but being capitalised and led by Eke Panuku, on behalf of council, to create that vision, which was always just on the horizon.
A concern about the transformation is that it could become the next Albert St, which has been subjected to several years of construction due to the City Rail Link, much to the frustration of local business owners.
But Darby is confident the same won’t happen again.
“We’ve taken some pretty fierce lessons from Albert St and the CRL,” Darby said.
“When you create new infrastructure, new places, there is often disruption. What we have learned is that we are now better skilled working with our contractors and all the partners that we involve in the creation of these places.
“Where there is infrastructure works happening, we’re learning that there are different methodologies available to us, in how to undertake a project that risks disrupting the economic and social life of a centre or street.
“I’ve seen this more recently on projects where we’ve been challenged on our approach.”