Purpose built apartment buildings move into Wellington’s CBD
The battle for Wellington’s heart has just intensified with the start of what its promoters describe as
the capital’s first purpose built apartments in the CBD. These are the apartments that are an integral part of the Chews Lane development put together by private equity outfit, Willis Bond, named appropriately enough after Willis Street, the frontage, and the nearby Bond Street.
The contractor is L.T McGuinness, the Wellington - based constructor that specialises
in blending the old Wellington with the new. The architect is Wellington’s iconic Ian Athfield.
The scheme will, in fact, also blend residential, retail, and commercial. Land Transport has put its name down for naming rights on the office part of the Chews Lane project. Shell has been mentioned as another anchor tenant. But it is the podium mounted high-rise apartment block that is arousing the most curiosity, accelerated by the communiqués of real estate agents describing how quickly they are
being snapped up.
Never before in New Zealand has an apartment building been slapped onto a main CBD frontage. In this instance: Lower Willis Street, and its adjoining Lambton Quay making up the city’s commercial and
retail Golden Mile.
The 20 level commercial and apartment structure is approximately half apartments. These are mounted
on the commercial podium levels and it these apartments that will dominate the heart of Willis Street, which nowadays – in foot traffic terms – has tended to creep ever closer to the Lambton Quay intersection.
Critics point to the wear and tear on apartment blocks, and complain about the likelihood of chipped windows and washing visible. The apartments will be owner occupied though, and the high podium mount means that they will be beyond the noise level that has proved such a problem for apartments in the Courtenay Place entertainment district.
An important point about the Chews Lane scheme is that it fronts on both Willis Street and the parallel Victoria Street behind it, on the port side. Victoria Street has proved the most difficult of all Wellington CBD streets to revitalise; in spite of its signature building being the Ian Athfield designed public library with its trademark metallic nikau palms.
Here Athfield has come up with a stunner. The commercial back of the Chews Lane development, the Victoria Street frontage, will feature a jutting out overhang which will cover the pavement like a rectangular attenuated lantern, and will be illuminated as such. This will impart a warmish glow to the rather desolate Victoria Street, as well as acting as a weather verandah for a big chunk of the pavement which, in spite of the council’s strictures on pavement weather-proofing, has always remained largely
uncovered.
Also on the Victoria Street frontage, the façade of one of the demolished older buildings has been preserved, thus fitting in with the City Council’s objective of avoiding endless swathes of unbroken glass curtain wall frontage.
Unfortunately, expect for some verandah filigree, the celebrated former brick building on Willis Street, which most recently housed the Maltsters pub, has disappeared. It was also formerly the headquarters for US forces in New Zealand during World War 2. The building under construction in its place will preserve the brick effect of the now disappeared building.
Several other art deco style buildings on the Willis St frontage closer to the Lambton Quay intersection
and involved in the stage one of Chews Lane have however, been preserved. The developers have had to tread carefully in regard to the Wellington City Council, which is increasingly being compelled to listen to preservationists. Trees, planted quite recently, specifically to beautify the area are being retained, in spite of the inconvenience they present to constructors on the Willis St frontage.
However, developers have pressed home their advantage in regard to the city council’s liberal policy on
central city building height. Rival developers, pressing home the Quays project on the Centre Port land, and indeed, on the council controlled Waterfront development itself, have been much more constrained.
Even so, the apartment rise from its podium base makes a strong gesture to a kind of modernistic harmony. It is wider in the middle and then tapers off to its ends. This is said to give the building symmetry with other rounded and bulging buildings in the area, a reference taken to include the prow – like Old Bank, and the Majestic Centre.
The entire development is scheduled for completion in two years time. Presumably Ian Cassells, proprietor of The Wellington Company, will be observing Chews Lane at every glass panel installed along the way. He has vowed to erect directly opposite it on the other side of Willis Street, the nation’s first green self contained residential and retail services compound, which he promises, will deal in the most uncompromising way imaginable with Wellington’s traffic problem. It is by no means as intense as Auckland’s yet nonetheless demonstrates the same underpinning characteristic. The more parking available and the more roads in and out of the city, the more cars there are to fill them.
He intends to out Athfield the celebrated Ian Athfield, who for the past 35 years has enjoyed an unchallenged reputation as the capital’s most innovative creator of structures. Mr Cassell’s green building, which will use the eyesore Airways Bulding site, also enjoys an alternative frontage, this
time on Boulcott Street.
Article from New Zealand Construction News
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