BNZ Development Award Finalist:
Karaka Grove by Anson & Project NZ Group
Karaka Grove is located in a convenient area of Takapuna, as well as in the campuses of Westlake school for boys and girls and Takapuna grammar, which are three famous schools. It is within walking distance to Smales Farm Science Park and the bus express terminus. But the neighbourhood has been underdeveloped and there is still a lot of larger land that is not fully developed.
The two lands purchased, 59 Karska St and 61 Karaka St, have a total area of 3,544 square meters. How to make full use of the land and meet the market demand is a subject in front of us. The implementation of the Unitary plan gave us a lot of choices; Single-family luxury, small single-family townhouse, terrace house or even low-rise apartment. After repeated discussions with the design unit on 7-8 schemes, the project team finally determined to reduce the density actively. The small single-family townhouse and Terrace house were mixed, and a total of 4 types of houses were developed in 3 stages. This arrangement does not seem to maximize land use but ensures that the product covers a large part of the market and avoids oversupply of the same type of housing.
Because the project is located in the mature of old residential areas, directly affected by the surrounding neighbours more than 20 units, so when doing the infrastructure projects met many challenges, such as the project has four poles need to remove or replace, there are two transformers need to upgrade, the surrounding hundreds of households, the two schools and a hospital will power outages. The project team dealt with our neighbours very well without any complaints.
Because of the council, stage2 building consent was approved much later than expected, which resulted in the risk of delay for the Stage1 construction period. In addition, the construction period for public pipelines, roads and walkways was also greatly affected. Our management team worked closely with the construction team, working in multiple jobs and working areas simultaneously, and Stage1 completed the project one month ahead of schedule, with public pipelines and roads finding a window between Stage1 and Stage 2.
Karaka Grove处于Takapuna交通比较方便的区域,同时又处于Westlake男女校和Takapuna Grammar 三所名校的校区内,步行可至Smales Farm科技园区以及公交快线总站。但是该街区一直以来欠缺发展,仍有很多较大的土地未充分开发。此外,如何充分利用土地同时迎合市场需求是摆在项目团队面前的一个课题。Unitary plan的实施给了我们很多的选择;小户型独栋、联排别墅甚至是低层公寓。一共对7-8种方案反复论 证,最终主动降低密度,以小户型独栋和连排别墅混合,一共4种房型分2个阶段开发,看似没有最大化土地利用率,但却确保产品可以覆盖大部分的市场区间而且避免同一类型房型过多造成供给过剩。
此外,由于Karaka Grove地处成熟老区,周边紧邻超过20户,在做基础设施工程时遇到很多挑战,如:有4个电线杆需移除或更换,有两个变压器需升级,周边有上百户居民及学校可能因此断电。项目团队很好的处理了周边邻居的关系,过程中没有任何投诉。项目管理团队和建筑团队紧密合作,多工作面同时推进,最终Stage1提前1个月完成工程,公共管线和道路也在Stage1和Stage2的工程之间找到窗口期顺利完成。
