4 December, 2019

Old Takapuna fire station for sale again

Negotiations are taking place over the sale of the now derelict former Takapuna fire station, which was purchased four years ago by a company intending to build a retirement village.

The property is advertised as a “lakeside trophy” with a deadline for a private treaty sale of 14 November. However, CBRE real estate agent James Fraser refused to confirm whether it had sold, saying it was a complicated sale and not simply ‘sell and settle’.

McConnell Clearmont Limited Partner-ship purchased the decommissioned fire station and property for $14.3 million in 2015. It intended to build its first own-brand retirement village with hospital care. Since then, no work has been done and the building has become increasingly derelict.

The fire station and section, zoned for terrace housing and apartments, with a rateable value of $11.85 million, is being marketed along with a neighbouring property, which has an RV of $1.555 million and zoning for ‘mixed housing urban’.

In June this year, McConnell Clearmont’s business manager, Charlotte Seath, told the Observer the company was still planning to go ahead with the development in 2020. Now Seath says the company is unable to discuss the sale.

The 5407sqm site has a resource consent for a five-storey, 96-unit retirement and aged-care village, granted in 2018, after an earlier notified consent application for a larger facility was abandoned.

When the Fire and Emergency NZ first put the property on the market, a group of residents lobbied Auckland Council to purchase it and annex it to neighbouring Killarney Park.

With apartment developments, they saw a need for more open space and the site would offer views to Lake Pupuke. Councillor Chris Darby says the council considered the property in 2015, but the vendors’ price expectation was too high.

A neighbour says residents are dismayed by the dilapidated state of the former fire station building. Over the past four years, it has been increasingly graffiti bombed and vandalised, with windows smashed and boarded up.

This article originally appeared in the 6 December of the Rangitoto Observer.