An Auckland developer is planning to build 55 light industrial units in the centre of Matakana, on land behind the Village Butchery and Matakana ITM.
Conrad Properties Group has set up a display suite for The Workshops development at 64 Matakana Valley Road and is marketing freehold strata title units at prices from $685,000 up to well over $1 million each.
The 11,000 square metre site, which sits between ITM’s warehouse and the Matakana River, is the last vacant land zoned for light industry in the township. Its permitted activities mean the units could be used for manufacturing, offices, warehouses, garden centres, trade showrooms and vehicle or boat sales, and there will be a café on-site.
The Workshops’ website shows an upmarket development occupied by artisan trades such as furniture design, pottery and classic bike restoration.
Conrad Properties’ sales director Thomas McAlister said The Workshops would not just be a standard industrial development.
“While our product is light industrial, the purpose for which the land is zoned, it is a very soft industrial product – heavily designed, sympathetic to its surroundings,” he said. “Not, as it could be, a standard industrial shed, for example.”
He said the group had held numerous meetings with Auckland Council and was now in “the pre-application phase”.
“We are now sufficiently assured to begin the marketing component of our development,” he said. “The resource consent will have to go through the usual regulatory process, as it does with all our projects. As always, we look forward to working with Council and the community to provide a consentable outcome under the Unitary Plan.”
Mr McAlister added that, with no reticulated water in Matakana, water infrastructure for the 55 units was being designed by “expert consultants with input from Council, Healthy Waters and Watercare”.
“The development will incorporate very large underground water storage tanks with capacity for the development, given the size of the site and catchment area available,” he said.
