The CRL buzz
Tuning in to progress
Words: Russell Brown
Photography: Blink Ltd. & Supplied
When nationwide project management company moved into Uptown in 2018, it was with an experienced eye on the future.
“The reason we moved in here was that we saw the potential from the City Rail Link,” says managing partner Tim Palin. “Whenever a city gets a key piece of infrastructure that unlocks a whole rail network like the one coming to Auckland, it actually won’t just serve people who are on the railway today. I think it will totally change the way Aucklanders perceive, view, use and appreciate their rail network. With the boost in land use around the stations, there is going to be an amazing buzz to the area.”
The building that Frequency bought in Nikau St was an empty warehouse, albeit one with a history, including a spell as a TV studio. Today, behind an unassuming frontage, it’s home to an airy open-plan office and mezzanines where 60 people work – and a basement auditorium for presentations, seminars and, sometimes, fun. There’s a big video screen, a table tennis table and a hidden deck with a perfectly-framed view of the maunga.
“Being good project managers, we managed the fit-out ourselves,” notes Tim. “We installed everything you see here.”
He recently celebrated 10 years with the company, which was founded 13 years ago by Jonathan Barry and now has offices in Tauranga, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin. Prominent figures such as Dame Fran Wilde are on its board of directors. It is a point of pride, Tim says, that “Jonathan’s first three staff members are still with us.”
Housing growth in Uptown means that some of Frequency’s staff live walking distance from work. Tim and his family live not far away in Morningside.
“Two stops away!” he observes. “So I’m really looking forward to stopping off at Maungawhau when the station reopens. That’ll be my regular commute.”
A unique benefit of working at Frequency may be that you can see the company’s work almost every time you step out the door. Housing projects, developments at Auckland International Airport, new public transport services, hospital upgrades, wastewater systems, schools, KiwiRail’s fibre network. If it’s infrastructure, there’s a decent chance that Frequency has provided advice and management services, including the CRL project itself in its early days.
“You know, we’ve watched this little precinct suffer a bit from the upheaval caused by the CRL construction work, as places inevitably do,” says Tim. “But I think we’re well and truly on the home stretch of that now, and I think the investment you’ll see coming will totally transform it. Ultimately, it will be an attractive place to live and an attractive place to spend your evenings. Once that station opens, you’ll see development of the land around the station that will lift the foot traffic, you’ll see the for-lease signs drop around here pretty quickly.”
He says a large part of the appeal of Uptown is that – like that building in Nikau St – it will present a blank slate for new ideas and developments.
“I’m certainly hopeful it’s not going to stay a blank slate for long, although I haven’t seen anything put out into the public sphere that tells me what they’re going to do. You’d think there could be some quite cool stuff happening when the city is given the opportunity of a large triangle of land right on one of the most useful public transport services in the country.
“You’ve got a highly connected part of Auckland. It’s already well connected by buses, but once the rail line opens, it’ll be incredibly well connected. It would be an absolute tragedy if all we do is parcel it up to individual landowners and see what happens. I think a whole precinct of mixed use development is what you want. The city has done it before; think about the consortium that acquired and developed the leasehold land at Britomart following the investment into that infrastructure.
“You’ve got the other stations in the central city that will serve your office blocks, your hotels, your retail. But you’ve got a really cool opportunity to make a little town centre here. You could imagine some really attractively-designed residential living, offering mixed tenure and for-sale homes. You could imagine on the ground floor you might have hospitality and maybe some amenity retail. “But also, what do you do in the public realm? What do those open spaces look like? The higher up you go [with buildings], the more you can afford a park. It’s the kind of thing that could foster a really cool community. That would transform a very underappreciated part of Auckland.”
For Tim, the streets can often be an extension of the office. “I love the variety of it all and I try to take as many walks around the block as I can,” he says. “I’m a big fan of walking meetings. Not every meeting I have is in this room or that room, or at my desk. Sometimes the best thing to do is go for a walk. It’s not every meeting you need to take minutes, so let’s not take a pen and paper.”
Tim acknowledges the local community’s desire to preserve Uptown’s soul and character.
“But what I want to say to that is, it can keep its soul, but it should evolve too. And if it doesn’t evolve, it’ll become unaffordable really quickly. If we open up that piece of infrastructure and don’t create spaces for people to live, work and play, all that will happen is prices will increase. If we’re talking about young families moving in here, you’ll see less and less of that if we open that marvel of infrastructure and transport infrastructure and then don’t create additional space. So you’re going to have to balance those interests.”
Tim says he gets frustrated with town planning rules in New Zealand, especially where they push new residential developments out to the hinterlands, often at the expense of food-producing land. And in Uptown’s case he has a particular beef with view shafts, the protected viewing corridors that preserve views of Auckland’s volcanic cones, but which cap permitted building heights. He’s encouraged by recent indications from the Government that that might change.
“The view shafts shoot straight over this little precinct,” he says. “It’s not going to develop, it’s not going to be improved and given that lick of paint unless we allow it to be built upwards. There’s a view out there that we’re protecting built heritage and I don’t really see that, because what we’re actually doing is letting built heritage deteriorate in front of our eyes because there is no compelling economic incentive to reinvest in it. There’s lots of things you can do other than demolish buildings that still allow you to get the economic benefit that incentivises preservation.”
Tim knows not everyone in the precinct shares his perspective on view shafts and height limits and that there’s a debate to be had. But he is a quick, intense thinker who can articulate ideas. Most of all, perhaps, he’s a man who really, really likes building things.
6-10 Nikau St
Eden Terrace
Phone: 09 620 4890
Website: frequency.nz
Instagram: @frequencyprojectsnz