PM Christopher Luxon opens NZ’s most expensive new office block

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New Zealand’s most expensive new office block is completed, with Prime Minister Christopher Luxon opening the $650 million building where about 3000 people will work.

Culum Manson of Mansons TCLM took the Herald on the first tour of Auckland’s 32,448sq m FNZ Centre, 50 Albert St, designed by
a team led by Architectus principal Severin Soder.

Luxon opened the building last month.
It has already been sold to Asia-Pacific investor PAG.
Dimitrios Vavougyios, managing director of PAG Real Assets Japan, and Ted Manson of the Ted Manson Foundation and Mansons TCLM joined Luxon to open the premises in October.
Luxon and Manson cut the ribbon on a plaque in the building’s Albert St foyer, the building having been developed on a site formerly owned by the publishers of the New Zealand Herald, which occupied the block for 152 years.
Culum Manson said most tenants had now begun the shift, in a major process expected to finish next month.
Internal fit-outs are complete in the 12-level block.
Wide floor plates of 2400sq m at lower levels and 2200sq m higher up drew tenants to the point where it is 100% leased.
Why not build a taller thinner tower?
“That was the maximum gross floor area for the site. We decided to go wider and lower. The whole concept was to bring a suburban campus-style building right into the centre of downtown. We built 12 big levels because that’s what the customers wanted. Many tenants want to be in this style of building,” he said referring to the six-star Green rating and the building being 20% carbon positive after a 30,000-plant native forest was formed to offset emissions.
Services cater for one person every 8sq m of net lettable area, although Manson said each worker had an area of around 12sq m so occupation was less concentrated than services could cater for.
The conference centre has an outdoor area above Mills Lane and a kitchen for functions.
Auckland Airport and bus timetable information is shown on a ground-floor digital display. Ground-level flooring mimics pavements and meeting rooms can take up to 20 people each, Manson said. Basement levels have 210 car parks as well as cycle parking and end-of-trip facilities.
The building functions and tenants on each floor are:
In 2022, the Overseas Investment Office cleared PAG’s CC Helios Trust Pte to buy 46-56 Albert St from Mansons (Mills Lane), with the asset value suppressed.
Soder said he worked with a team designing the building and although he led that, he was only one of many architects from Architectus who had designed the centre.
The main entrance on Albert St is 10m above the Mills Lane entry, he said.
“A four-storey podium structure negotiates the level difference between the two frontages.
“The podium realises the opportunity to create a connected ground plane; it links Mills Lane with Albert St via cascading stairs and lifts and sets up a new laneway, providing access to the Voco Hotel,” Soder said.
“This new link and a secondary entry lobby will bring activity to Mills Lane and provide a convenient route between Albert St and Queen St.”
In addition, the main ground floor had a generous lobby with a spiral stair linking that with the first floor “to create a piano nobile for the tenant on this floor and above”, Soder said.
Anne Gibson has been the Herald’s property editor for 24 years, written books and covered property extensively here and overseas.

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