Northbrook Wynyard Quarter to be city’s 1st vertical retirement village: $750m plans, $13.75m penthouses

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Julian Cook and Chris Meehan inside the new $4m showroom on Beaumont St. Photo / Dean Purcell

NZX-listed Winton Land has a $750 million scheme for Auckland CBD’s first vertical retirement village and to redevelop part of Wynyard Quarter’s waterfront edge, refurbishing and rebuilding a 1.7ha site.

Units up for grabs include 604sq m penthouses with four bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms, on sale from $13.75m.

A 12-level 154-unit retirement village, 200-seat wedding venue, new 250-seat waterfront dining/bar building, outdoor pool in a resort-like zone for village residents, new marina piers, dredging the seabed to make it deeper, a new marina and refurbishing many other surrounding buildings are part of the plan for the site.

Winton chief executive Chris Meehan and director Julian Cook took the Herald on a tour on Thursday, opening the $4m purpose-built show suite, 136 Beaumont St.

Cape Interiors + Construction built a new standalone apartment to show buyers what’s being offered.

The retirement village site is freehold while Winton’s waterfront side of Beaumont St is leasehold in perpetuity to Viaduct Harbour Holdings, lease payments reviewed every seven years, with another four to run in its current term, Meehan said.

Marketing starts today for the retirement village to be built by Icon. The display suite is also open to the public today from 10am-4pm.

The vertical village will rise on the site of a now-ditched scheme by one of China’s wealthiest women who planned a 435-unit $400m apartment / retail complex. In 2018, Fu Wah group, chaired by Chan Laiwa, said it would build there. It didn’t. Mansons bought the block and sold part to Winton for its new village.

Northbrook Wynyard Quarter will be New Zealand’s highest-price retirement village: Occupation right agreements (ORAs) on two double-height penthouses are being marketed at $13.75m each, with a 30 per cent deferred management fee resulting in $4.1m being lost after four years.

ORAs on one-bedroom 62-90sq m units start from $1.45m, two-bedroom two-bathroom 98-268sq m places start from $2.25m, and three-bedroom two-bathroom 260sq m-550sq m places start from $3.15m.

And from $10.95m, four-bedroom, 3.5 bathroom 375-604sq m places are available.

Elements of the scheme on the two blocks dissected by Beaumont St are:

* Selling occupation rights agreements to 105 retirement village apartments in blocks up to 12 levels, on the Beaumont/Pakenham/Daldy St corner, part of the freehold site bought from Mansons TCLM which is developing a much larger portion of the block behind Air New Zealand’s global HQ. After four years, retirement village buyers will incur a 30 per cent deferred management fee, losing nearly a third of their purchase price.

* Developing a 50-bed hospital offering higher-level care for village residents.

* 220 car parks beneath the new village.

* Refurbishing the waterfront 11 Westhaven Dr, the white multi-level offices, originally Mantells On the Water at Pier 21. Peter Gordon’s Homeland restaurant and cooking school are on the ground floor now. And Winton Land will move its offices into this block and lease out commercial space, Meehan said.

* Refurbishing Pier 21′s Drystack Boatpark, with double-stacking for 190 craft, at 15 Westhaven Dr, continuing the same use for those premises.

* Building a new 200-seat events/wedding venue beside Oram’s Marine;

* Demolishing piers at the existing Pier 21 marina, where 34 vessels are moored. Meehan said those piers must be renewed and will be replaced by 31 berths for much bigger vessels.

* Dredging the marina basin area in front of Pier 21 from 2.5m low-tide depth to 3.5m. Retirement village residents will get first dibs on those berths and Meehan expects most to be leased to Northbrook Wynyard Quarter retirement village residents.

* Converting the old existing double-height paint shed beside Oram’s Marine into a 250-seat waterfront “boathouse” dining/bar venue, directly facing the water.

* Developing what is now the bare flat land between 11 Westhaven Dr and the old paint shed into a resort-style outdoor recreation area for the exclusive use of village residents, with 25m pool, gardens, lounge areas and pergola.

* Demolishing most of the shops on the Westhaven Dr/Beaumont St corner around Johnny Wray’s Coffee. Meehan said these didn’t meet seismic standards. New bodega (retail) and maritime retail buildings are planned for this area;

* Extending Westhaven waterfront walkway from where it finishes now at Swashbucklers to around the Winton properties to end at the new boathouse restaurant;

* Creating a new public laneway/promenade from Beaumont St down to the waterfront, with a new pedestrian crossing to be developed on Beaumont St to connect to that.

Internal stud heights within retirement village units will be 3.2m to give more of a sense of space, with parquet flooring, and electric fireplaces with marble mantles.

Meehan said the new village would be like a five-star hotel, its waterfront views protected by Winton controlling land between the towers and the sea.

“We did a lot of research and the demography was very strong. There are a lot of people in their 70s and 80s and a lot of them have a lot of money. There’s nothing that caters to them at the moment. People really want to be looked after.

“They’re used to driving BMWs and Mercedes, flying first or business class and that buyer is not going to go into a Ryman or similar. We thought there was enough evidence to say there are wealthier retirees who would want to live out their years in a five-star hotel-like setting,” he said.

Last July, the Herald reported Winton buying the land, buildings and marina lease via Pier 21 Holdings, wholly owned by Meehan’s Winton Holdings. Interests associated with Peter and Chris Spencer had owned that for around 25 years.

Meehan also bought the half-hectare site from Mansons TCLM for the retirement village across the other side of Beaumont St.

An indoor 18m heated pool within the village, cafe, restaurant, bar concierge, private dining room, wellness lounge, salon, yoga studio, gym, spa, infrared sauna, wine and whiskey library, art studio and gallery, media room, studio lounge and external terrace areas are also planned.

A residents’ lounge and bar within the vertical village is planned too.

Cook, ex-CEO of New Zealand’s second-largest listed retirement village business Summerset Group, said he had been thinking about the luxury end of the RV market when he was in that role and it “just really isn’t tackled in New Zealand”.

He added: “No one really does it well. There are a lot of people who would like what a retirement village offers but really just don’t like the kind of villages that are there at the moment”.

Meehan said the waterfront part of the plans would be called Cracker Bay, “a fantastic public amenity as well as being an amenity for the people who live in the retirement village”.

Winton’s share price has dropped since the company listed two years ago, market cap falling from $700m+ last year to $533m now, its share price going from $3.80 in December 2021 to $1.80 now.

The company’s IPO on the NZX and ASX in December 2021 raised $350m. Macquarie Asset Management tipped in $200m.

Winton is developing four other Northbrook retirement villages in Hobsonville Point, Christchurch, Wanaka and Arrowtown.

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