Waikato Business News April/May 2018

28 WAIKATO BUSINESS NEWS April/May 2018
BCD GROUP - PARKHAVEN
Landmark apartment building
taking shape in central city
An ambitious plan to develop what may be
central Hamilton’s first purpose-built multiuse
apartment building is taking shape on
Tristram Street.
By RICHARD WALKER
The five-storey Parkhaven
building will house a
cafe and retail on the
ground floor, and office space
and 21 apartments above.
The building opposite
Founders Theatre and close to
Seddon Park is due for com-
pletion in December, with
the developers keen to play
their part in enhancing urban
design in Hamilton.
“We are really passionate
about density and revitalising
the city,” says BCD Group
commercial manager and
CFO Mitch Mace.
“We were keen to do something
pretty cool, something
different for Hamilton and use
the skills at our disposal by
going up.”
The development came
about because BCD, a Hamilton-based
engineering and
planning firm, was outgrowing
its current office, a few
metres from where the new
building is going up. The
Department of Corrections,
which had been based on the
site, moved out, and BCD
could see the potential.
The $14.5 million development
meshes with a council
plan to make the area north of
London Street high density,
and gives BCD the chance to
become the anchor tenant in
an office space of their own
design. Mixed use development
has long been successful
in the likes of Toronto, New
York & Melbourne by providing
facility to “live, work,
and play”. It is starting to gain
traction in cities like Auckland
and Tauranga and the
development team were of the
view that now is the time for
Hamilton to embrace the concept
also.
The process for Parkhaven
started in 2016. They were
able to build on the experience
particularly of their founding
director Blair Currie who has
worked with the likes of Stark
Construction, CBD Developments
and Foster Develop on
buildings around the city. The
developers’ approach was to
get the building fully documented
and the design team
around the table before getting
it priced up.
Hamilton architect Brian
White says that approach
made the project “fantastic”
to work on.
“Part of it for us is working
with BCD. It was a bit of
a model project in terms of
process.
“They had everyone
around the table really early,
there was good communication.
All the consultant team
were on board right at the
outset, so we had quite good
information from everyone to
coordinate with our [design]
package. It sounds pretty
basic but it often doesn’t happen
that way.”
Mitch mentions that there
are a lot of talented consultants
in Hamilton and it was
important to the development
team that all the consultants
were locally based so the
result could be a showcase for
what talent in the region could
achieve.
“The efficient design that
resulted was achieved by
the Edwards White team and
engineers working closely
together early in the process,
which allowed sensible structural
design while not compromising
the overall architectural
vision.”
“Often in developments
compromises are made along
the way. From our concept we
pretty much made none, only
minor tweaks.”
Brian White says it was