As part of our continuing series on the changing urban landscape of Auckland, Steffi McKeown looks at what’s happening at Sylvia Park in Mount Wellington. Once an industrial and semi-rural wasteland, it is fast becoming a key mixed-use metropolitan centre in its own right.
IKEA’s decision to open its first New Zealand store (in December 2024) at Sylvia Park, with the purchase of land from Kiwi Property, signals the importance of Sylvia Park as a market-leading* retail development in NZ.
But while most people equate Sylvia Park in Mount Wellington with shopping alone, we believe that it’s set to be the first truly mixed-use development in New Zealand of real scale.
Of course, as New Zealand’s largest shopping mall, it has a lot of retail to shout about. Since first opening in 2006, it now has more than 200 stores spread over 100,000m2 of retail space. Think Commercial Bay’s office building (PwC Tower) times two-and-a-half. It’s also home to a number of retail ‘firsts’ for New Zealand including Zara and Culture Kings and the aforementioned IKEA. As well as the mall, the precinct also consists of large format retail such as Freedom Furniture, Ezibuy and Torpedo 7 located directly across from the mall’s main entrance on Mt Wellington Highway.
“As one of Auckland’s 10 metropolitan centres (centres for employment, education, community services and apartment living, as well as shopping and entertainment), Sylvia Park is focused on becoming a well-functioning urban environment that meets the changing needs of our diverse communities” says Steffi (as determined by the August 2020 National Policy Statement on Urban Development). There’s also a government focus to increase housing density to meet Auckland’s ever-increasing population. The Unitary Plan therefore enables building heights of over six storeys for metropolitan centres in a bid to develop them as key residential and employment hubs.
In September last year, Sylvia Park owner, Kiwi Property, announced its build-to-rent plans to develop 295 units at Sylvia Park – a $221m development of one, two and three-bedroom options – making it the largest build-to-rent development in New Zealand. Construction broke ground in late 2021 with residents expected to move in in 2024. As a relatively new concept for New Zealand’s housing market, Kiwi also plans to develop 245 build-to-rent units at LynnMall, with the potential of further homes being added to Kiwi’s portfolio at Sylvia Park, LynnMall and Drury over the next 10 years (~2,500 homes).
To further its development of employment opportunities in the area and following the completion of the 10-storey ANZ Raranga in 2019, anchored by tenants ANZ and IAG, a second commercial building broke ground in November 2021 at 3 Te Kehu Way which, once completed, will provide 7,000+m2 of space. Once constructed, a third tower, Sylvia Tower, will be the largest of the three commercial buildings and will also have a hotel above its 10 floors.
Sylvia Park Business Centre has also acquired a number of industrial properties behind the main shopping centre in and around Carbine Road for further expansion opportunities.
In our view, Kiwi Property’s multi-million-dollar expansion of Sylvia Park has marked Mount Wellington as one of Auckland’s finest commercial hubs, as well as leading the way in NZ in terms of truly mixed use developments of world-class standards.
* Interestingly, the sale of this site triggered another project for TwentyTwo supporting the establishment of a new milk distribution hub for Fonterra. We’ll report on this separately once completed.
