Extending Luxury Apartment Living

The third stage of the Milford centre transformation involves:

• Building high-rise luxury apartments above the retail centre. These apartments will have impressive urban and sea views and generous balconies.

•  Excavating and building a three level basement parking area beneath the building extension.

Milford Centre Limited is seeking a change to the North Shore Section of the Auckland District Plan to allow additional flexibility in order to proceed with this stage.  For further information on Private Plan Chane 34 click here.  Subsequent resource consent applications will then be required to enable Auckland Council to assess building design and construction details.

 A private plan change request was originally lodged with the North Shore City Council in October 2008.  Auckland local government agencies amalgamated in November 2010 and the new Auckland Council decided to re-notify a revised Private Plan Change 34 after the two year time limit for issuing a decision lapsed.

 The revised and re-notified plan change seeks the same outcome, but has been updated to reflect other Auckland District Plan and Auckland Regional Policy Statement changes that have occurred since October 2008, namely the highlighted importance of providing for intensive residential activity in identified high density centres and intensive corridors as one means of achieving a compact, sustainable urban form, Auckland-wide. Milford is recognised as being one such centre where intensive residential activity could occur, and the new and revised objectives and policies are proposed to be met by allowing buildings of a significantly higher height than currently provided for, subject to prescribed standards.Another plan change that has been introduced into the North Shore section of the District Plan requires a comprehensive urban design analysis of buildings such as the towers that are proposed in Milford.  All future development would be subject to urban design panel and resource consent procedures.

Milford Centre Ltd has worked closely with Auckland Council to address publicly raised issues by placing a cap on the proposed number of apartments (235), and introducing rules on apartment sizes - requiring a balance of one, two and three bedroomed units. In addition thorough consideration has been given to the environment, urban design, visual and landscaping, shading, transport, social, acoustic, infrastructure and geotechnical effects of the proposed development.