Sylvia Park

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A view over the main carparking and length of the centre, with the cinemas and railway station at the right rear.

Sylvia Park is a large business park and shopping centre in the Auckland, New Zealand suburb of Mount Wellington. Less commonly known, the area around the centre (which includes some residential and other commercial developments) is also called Sylvia Park (the centre takes its name from the area, not vice versa, but Sylvia Park is not officially a suburb). The area is located adjacent to two major interchanges of the Auckland Southern Motorway - the South-Eastern Highway (which passes directly through the shopping centre on a viaduct) and Mount Wellington Highway.

Land and store space in the Sylvia Park development is let out to a wide variety of major retailers, with key tenants including The Warehouse Extra, Hoyts Cinemas, Borders bookstore, Dick Smith Powerhouse as well as the Pak'n Save and Foodtown supermarkets. In addition, the centre has franchises of all major New Zealand banks and a wide variety of other retailers. The centre employs approximately 2,500 staff, and was drawing about 12,000 shoppers at a time during the weekends of the 2007 winter months.^[1]

The name Sylvia Park is from the large country house / stud farm built here in the late 19th century.^[2] It was the country residence of Sir Maurice O'Rourke, one of the first Speakers of the House. Sir Maurice used the land primarily for horse breeding. The house was demolished in the 1960s and the land given over to either industrial use or became part of the Mount Richmond public domain.^{[citation needed]}

1 History
2 Future plans
3 See also
4 References
5 External links

[edit] History

[edit] Development

The development is owned by Sylvia Park Business Centre Ltd (SPBCL), a subsidiary of Kiwi Income Property Trust. The development is situated on 24 hectares of land, a large part of which is still to be developed. KIPT acquired the land in two transactions in 1995 .

However, the land was at that stage zoned for industrial use by the Auckland City Council. The developers asked the council to modify the district plan to allow high-density commercial use, a change which the council supported, and drafted into 'Plan Change 4'. However, the plan change was opposed by the Ngati Maru Iwi authority, which represents Māori interests in the area. A December 2001 decision of the Environment Court confirmed the plan change. Demolition and construction began in 2004, with retail construction beginning in 2005.

[edit] Opening issues

Stage One of the development opened to the public on June 6, 2006. The opening received nationwide television and radio coverage the day before, as the development is one of the largest in New Zealand. This resulted in a very high shopper turnout on the opening day, and despite planning by SPBCL, caused severe gridlock on the notoriously busy Auckland Southern Motorway as well as major arterial routes in the vicinity of the centre, including the South-Eastern & Mount Wellington Highways. Transit and SPBCL have taken the unusual step of recommending people postpone trips to the mall.^[3] SPBCL will be required to start a planned traffic monitoring programme ahead of time and may be required to upgrade key roads if trigger points are reached.^[4] Stage Two of the development opened in August 2006 and expanded the fashion, beauty and food retailers of the centre.

In contrast to the initial interest, weekday retail sales were soon considered to be flagging, with the centre being nicknamed 'Spooky Park' by some. The owners noted that this did not extend to weekend sales, and that the centre had in the meantime gained during the weekdays as well.^[1]

[edit] New Zealand's biggest mall

Stage Three was opened 29 March 2007, and included a cinema (along with the biggest 35mm permanent movie screen in the world, according to the Guinness World Records),^[5] Borders bookstore, 45 new stores, as well as bars and restaurants.^[6]

When Stage Three opened, it brought to New Zealand 26 stores which were either new to New Zealand or did not yet have stores in shopping centres,^[7] including a Playboy Style Boutique, Timberland Store and General Issue.

Stage Four opened in June 2007, and finished the retail area of the centre, which now has 200 shops covering 6.5 ha of indoors space and is valued at NZ$450 million.^[1] Sylvia Park's reign as the largest New Zealand shopping centre is however expected to be short, with the even larger Westfield Albany to open in late 2007. Westfield Albany will have a lesser number stores, but cover a larger area.

The reopening of the rebuilt Sylvia Park Train Station in July 2007, on a railway line directly to the east of the shopping centre, as required by the resource consent of the centre, now links Sylvia Park to destinations along the Eastern Line with at least half-hourly frequency.^[8]

[edit] Future plans

Stages Five is planned to open in 2008 and is to add NZ$ 200 million of office space in four separate buildings. Kiwi Income noted that it had always planned to develop offices around the perimeter of the centre, but had delayed this until the retail was starting to take off.^[1] Its recently dedicated train station will, along with a bus terminal and the fact that the development is located by a major road junction, make Sylvia Park easily accessible by both private and public forms of transport from the majority of Auckland's central, eastern and southern suburbs.