20 Years of Heritage Restoration at Britomart

At Britomart, New Zealand’s largest heritage urban regeneration project, the last two decades have also seen a substantial transformation. April 2024 marked the 20-year anniversary of the signing of the Development Deed that entrusted Cooper and Company (and its partners at the time, Phillimore Properties and Multiplex) with Britomart’s long-term renewal and development.

When that original development consortium, then known as Bluewater, won Auckland Council’s international competition for the right to redevelop Britomart, the waterfront was a completely different place. Most of the buildings in the area had been abandoned for years, with windows broken or boarded up and exterior paint faded and peeling. Some spaces housed squatters, while others were dumping grounds for rubbish, furniture and old mattresses, infested with rats and pigeons. 

Some buildings, including the Chief Post Office and the Hayman Building, had been damaged by fires and water leaks. And in the centre of all the dereliction was an empty, three-block-long, partially gravelled space on top of the new tunnel that had been created 

When that original development consortium, then known as Bluewater, won Auckland Council’s international competition for the right to redevelop Britomart, the waterfront was a completely different place. Most of the buildings in the area had been abandoned for years, with windows broken or boarded up and exterior paint faded and peeling. Some spaces housed squatters, while others were dumping grounds for rubbish, furniture and old mattresses, infested with rats and pigeons. 

Some buildings, including the Chief Post Office and the Hayman Building, had been damaged by fires and water leaks. And in the centre of all the dereliction was an empty, three-block-long, partially gravelled space on top of the new tunnel that had been created to link to the brand-new Britomart Transport Centre.    

Cooper and Company’s successful proposal undertook to transform the area into a vibrant, low-rise precinct, with the century-old brick warehouses restored and new modern buildings that embraced the character of the place added. Open public spaces would give people places to gather, while artworks would nod to the history of the area, going back to the time before the land was ‘reclaimed’ from the sea and it was an abundant seafood-gathering spot known as Onepanea Bay to the local Ngāti Whātua iwi.

The first buildings to be cleared were some of the smaller and more manageable ones – the Art Deco Maritime Building, on the corner Of Gore and Quay Sts, the Northern Steamship Building directly across the road and the Levy Building on Customs St East. The enormous Chief Post Office, had its ground floor transformed into a grand entrance for the new Britomart Transport Centre, with Cooper and Company restoring the floors above for offices. The initial refurbishment of all four buildings was completed by late 2006, by which time Cooper and Company had bought out the other two partners in the Bluewater Consortium and established sole responsibility for Britomart’s future.

The Maritime Building was chosen as the location for Cooper and Company’s head office for its clear view across the centre of the precinct, Downstairs, the Britomart team leased the space to a branch of the popular Ponsonby cafe Santos. The Northern Steamship Building also had a ground floor that became a buzzy gastropub. Together, the two eateries became an early drawcard to bring people into the neighbourhood.

The refurbishment of the Chief Post Office was led by established Auckland firm Jasmax in partnership with heritage architects Salmond Reed, working alongside Mario Madayag, who led the design of the Britomart Transport Centre. Auckland practice Cheshire Architects, who at the time had their office in the Maritime Building alongside Cooper and Company, worked on the other early refurbishment projects. Working closely with Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga (previously the New Zealand Historic Places Trust), Ngāti Whātua Orākei and the Cooper and Company development team, the firm took a big-picture approach that took the development of the whole precinct into account, and used a light touch when stripping back buildings so the layers of history in each would remain apparent.  

Meanwhile, a programme of ongoing public events and activations was underway to give the public assurance that the dark days of the area were in the past. A pavilion tent set up in Takutai Square quickly became a centre for art fairs and exhibitions, festivals, product launches and private events, while a Saturday farmer’s market and high-impact events like the first Laneways Festival and the Red Bull City Scramble made downtown Auckland feel exciting and relevant again. 

Instead of undertaking full refurbishments of the buildings one at a time, the Britomart team chose to get as many buildings as possible cleaned up and brought into safe and functional states so they could be leased at accessible rates to creative agencies, up-and-coming fashion retailers, new eateries and bars and other businesses. This holistic approach focused on bringing energy and innovation to the whole area at speed – and it worked. 

The broader clean-up was achieved over the first five years, and a second round of more substantial refurbishments began. One notable approach was the decision to internally blend together adjoining buildings, like Excelsior House and Stanbeth House (now the Excelsior Stanbeth Building, creating larger floor plates that major commercial tenants required, and making the precinct accessible to a new range of businesses – law practices, financial management firms and government agencies.    

Following a research trip to the United States in 2009, the Britomart executive team became enthused about greening urban areas, and on their return immediately established more than 20 specimen trees within the area, the lawn in Takutai Square, and the first of what would eventually become hundreds of tree and flower-filled planters and pots.

By 2010, the Seafarers, Union Fish, Charter Customs and Excelsior Stanbeth Buildings had been refurbished, and the new building that would house the New Zealand head offices of Westpac and EY was rising at the edge of the precinct, next to the Britomart Carpark, on the site of the former Oriental Markets.

The East Building, as the new office development was known, was the first building the Britomart team worked on in collaboration with the New Zealand Green Building Council. At the time of its completion in 2010, it was the first 4 Green Star commercial building in Auckland. 

For Auckland, this was the start of the contemporary sustainable building movement. The New Zealand Green Building Council had been established just five years earlier and progressive developers, architects and clients quickly recognised the benefits that sustainable buildings offered their users in terms of health, comfort, resource efficiency and cost savings. 

Britomart’s heritage buildings represented a unique opportunity to create a precinct founded in sustainability. Refurbishing an existing building is inherently more sustainable than building a new one, and refurbishing to a high Green Star standard – although it can be challenging – is perhaps the most sustainable building approach of all. 

“There are numerous advantages to reusing our existing buildings,” says Andrew Eagles, CEO of the New Zealand Green Building Council. “To create a new building involves a lot of concrete, steel, timber, glass, and other materials that account for about 9 to 10 percent of New Zealand’s overall carbon emissions.”

“The other exciting element is keeping the heritage of New Zealand buildings and dispelling this myth that older existing buildings can’t perform. We’ve seen at Britomart that’s been evidenced with really high NABERSNZ ratings for quite old buildings. You can take an existing building and not just perform up to where the current Building Code is for a new building, but outperform that significantly. And that’s down to really good facilities management, good controls, good analysis, and good engagement with tenants. And that energy saving makes up the other 10 percent of carbon emissions that New Zealand’s construction and property creates. So it’s half embodied and half operational.”

Soon after the East Building reached completion, a set of new temporary buildings known as The Showcases were being assembled in the centre of the precinct. These were designed by Cheshire Architects to house a range of fashion and food businesses, and were soon followed by The Pavilions, a set of small-scale contemporary buildings on the same site. Together, these buildings were intended to provide tenancies of a few years while the prospect of a more substantial new building on the site was explored. As it happened, the life of these much-loved buildings extends to the present day.

In 2016, Australis House and the Nathan Building were refurbished and blended together internally in a project designed by Britomart-based architecture practice Peddlethorp. This was a milestone in the evolution of the precinct, bringing the international luxury houses Tiffany & Co and Chanel into the neighbourhood as retailers, and adding a new ‘face’ to what was previously the back end of Australis House, facing Takutai Square. 

From 2017, the Britomart team’s focus moved to the development of The Hotel Britomart, along with the surrounding city block. The 10-storey, 5 Green Star hotel (the first such hotel in New Zealand) was designed by Cheshire Architects in a style that nods to the brick heritage buildings around it. 

At the lower levels, the new building adjoins the heritage Masonic House and Buckland Building 14 , which were refurbished and combined internally at the same time. A new brick-lined pedestrian laneway, gifted the name Tuawhiti Lane by Ngāti Whātua Orākei, was created to wind through the base of the hotel from Customs St East to Galway Street. As part of the project several long-term tenants of the precinct, including the restaurant Cafe Hanoi and fashion boutiques Karen Walker and Huffer, moved to new and larger sites within the block.

The Covid-19 pandemic hit when the hotel was midway through construction, although it only caused a three-month delay in opening, with the first guests welcomed in October 2020.

The refurbishment of the Barrington and Sofrana Buildings on Galway Street followed. These buildings, which had their original names reinstated in the redevelopment process, were awarded the precinct’s first 5 Green Star rating for a heritage building and reopened as the Hayman Kronfeld Building 15 in November 2022. 

With the refurbishment of the Kiwi Building in January 2024, a significant chapter in Britomart’s development came to a close. The Kiwi Tavern 16 was the last of the 18 original heritage buildings within the neighbourhood to have been carefully refurbished. 

Unlike many of the other buildings in the precinct, the Kiwi Building has remained in near-constant use ever since it was built, and never reached a state of dereliction. One of the smallest buildings in the precinct, its refurbishment has also achieved a 5 Green Star rating – now business as usual for the development team.

This is not the end of the process. Work began again on the Maritime  Building in 2023, with a roof refurbishment and modifications to the third level (added in the 1970s) to bring it more in keeping with the original structure. Work has also begun on a refurbishment of the three levels of offices above Britomart Transport Centre (the former Chief Post office Building), this time targeting 5 Green Stars and a WELL Gold rating (for more information on WELL ratings, see pgs 26-29). These projects illustrate the true nature of development – a process that’s never complete, looping back on itself over time. 

Each building refurbished over the last 20 years has been unique in design and size, with its own quirks, challenges,  opportunities and stories emerging from the refurbishment process. The development process can sometimes seem slow in the moment, but it also offers great opportunities for learning how to become more sustainable along the way.