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A shopping centre complex on 4.2 hectares of land next to Mitre 10 Mega in Warkworth has been given the green light.
Developer Glen Inger has confirmed the project, known as Kowhai Falls, has been granted a resource consent and the centre will be built in stages over “the next few years”.
The centre will include The Warehouse, Warehouse Stationery and Noel Leeming under one roof, covering 6500 square metres – larger than a rugby field. Mr Inger says that as a consequence, The Warehouse in Snells Beach will close.
The following three blocks, or stages, will add up to about 15,500sqm of mixed retail space and several hundred customer carparks.
Mr Inger says the project has many sustainable features including a low carbon footprint and low whole-of-life energy efficiencies. It will include a large solar system, car charging stations, huge insulation levels to all walls, roof and under-slab insulation, the latest in energy management with high spec air conditioning, and the latest LED lighting.
“Then the main structure will be a first, with a full NZ laminated timber superstructure instead of steel, which equates to 95 per cent less carbon than steel,” he says. “This will be The Warehouse Group’s most efficient building.”
Mr Inger, who grew up in Port Albert and attend Rodney College, adds that it will be a long term family build-and-hold project.
Commenting on the loss of two major stores from Warkworth’s town centre, and The Warehouse in Snells Beach, One Mahurangi manager Murray Chapman says there are two ways to look at it.
“The first is to be mortified that the stores are moving, but the second is to see it as an opportunity to attract more boutique-type retail shops to the town,” he says. “It’s time to think hard about what sort of shopping experience we want people to have when they come to Warkworth and to look at trying to attract destination-type stores to the town.”
