Moving into a vertical street is a life decision, resident Audrey van Ryn said she escaped the sprawl of Kohimarama to live in one of the growing number of apartments crowding the Auckland city centre skyline.
Mrs van Ryn moved into the St James Apartments high above Kitchener Street more than ten years ago, downsizing, de-cluttering and decreasing her travel time to work.
"Storage has become a bit of an issue, but you learn to live with the differences."
The Prime Minister John Key said first-home buyers in Auckland should consider apartments as a realistic first step on the property ladder, but is all the hype of moving up rather than out worth it?
The city centre is described by community group, Splice, as the area between the motorways and no further south than Karangahape Road.
'The problem with living in the city is that you get addicted to good coffee,' building community, convenience and conversations.
Through a reasonably unassuming door, into a tired looking building halfway down Albert Street, up the grand old elevator to floor four. This is where Kathy Ross has been living for the past five years since returning to New Zealand after a spell teaching English in South Korea.
Ms Ross chose the apartment lifestyle because she believed it would be easier.
No garden to weed, no lawns to mow and no physical work up-keeping the outside of the building.
That easy lifestyle was interrupted when she became the chairperson for the body corporate of the 21 apartments in the Prince Albert Apartments building.
"The chairperson of the body corporate sets the tone for the building," she said, “if you’re living in an apartment building, and there are people in it you don’t like, then its absolute hell.”
Ms Ross works as an admin temp, is a member of the Central City Residents Group and maintains the upkeep of the building and fosters good relationships between those who live in her building.
With all this in mind, Ms Ross laughed as she said her main issue was getting rid of “stuff”.
“You have to keep your stuff minimal… we do not have that many places to take stuff in the city, we don’t have a car boot sale or any facilities to give stuff away… you do not get much storage in an apartment,” she said.
Community advocate Mik Smellie works on connecting the strands of central community and pulls them together as one.
The first word that comes to mind when he’s asked about the benefits of living in the central city is the level of connectedness he feels.
“I live and work on the same street, my doctor’s on the same street and in fact, I’m starting to wonder whether we even need a car… We are basically a walking community.”
Mr Smellie works for Splice, a Christian organisation that works on building a healthy community in the central city.
A job which one would think would be easy, considering he bumps into his neighbours as wanders down the street.
Communication is the main issue plaguing Mr Smellie.
“I’m trying to identify one person in every apartment building in town to spread messages and communicate with other tenants.”
Some have noticeboards, others Facebook pages and some just drop notes in letterboxes.
Those messages contain details of community building activities, like Mr Smellie’s Tai Chi classes on a Thursday night or a coffee meet-up for apartment residents.
“We’ve even created a Yoga playgroup for parents with young children… it now has about 18 members.”
Splice’s flagship event is the Christmas barbeque in Freyberg Square, which hundreds of central city residents come to.
The internet has helped to break down the walls between the vertical streets.
Ms Ross said she has made many friends through the social media website, MeetUp.com.
MeetUp.com is a global online platform where people can post events they are organising.
She has used the website to organise hiking trips and to help other apartment dwellers explore their spiritual sides.
Being able to pop out for coffee with a friend, or sneak down to the wharf for a walk in the sunshine is vital to ensuring body health while living in an apartment.
Building strong communities is vital to staying healthy
Residents said its important to know your neighbours, whether it be for a drop of milk, a pinch of salt or a drop of red wine after a long day's work.
Ms van Ryn said when her new neighbours moved in, she slipped a note under their door inviting them round for a wine.
A leading psychologists said these small acts of kindness help residents feel less lonely and secluded in their apartments.
Dr Niki Harre said the mental health of residents has a lot to do with the layout and amenities of the building. Things like open communal spaces and being located near green spaces for people to wander, can make a significant difference.
"When we’re making decisions about how we are going to live in the future… it is absolutely critical that we consider environments that people flourish."
Overcrowding of apartments has received widespread publicity, as residents find unique ways to combat rising rent prices.
Squeezing too many people into apartments can have significant health issues.
Central city General Practitioner, Dr Paul Johns, does not keep a record of which of his patients live in apartments, but said there are a lot of health conditions consistent with living in close proximity to other people.
Gastro bugs, infections, rheumatic fever and meningitis are all common in apartment environments, but Dr Johns said it was important to note that most health conditions can occur in any household as an apartment “is just a small house”.
Psychology student Hannah Fletcher lives in a five-bedroom apartment on Mount Street. The 19-year-old moved into the apartment this year after spending her first year of university in the halls of residence.
“I got sick quite a lot last year, I feel like I’ve been better this year, but I still get quick sick.”
She blames it on the lack of airflow and sunlight in the apartment.
“If one person in the flat gets sick, everyone gets sick.”
Miss Fletcher said she does not get outside as much as she should.
“Over exam period, I don’t even leave the building.”
Dr Harre said too many people are staying inside, and this was an issue in both apartments and in the suburbs,
“We all have cars that we travel around in, and cars are just a little inside space that’s not actually outside,” Dr Harre said.
Dr Harre believes people in both houses and apartments are spending too much time inside because of safety fears.
“People are reluctant to let people play freely outside.”
Once the door's closed behind you, that's it you are safe
There is a stigma that the central city is not a safe place, but some residents are defiant and said they have never felt unsafe.
A lot of the violence is alcohol and drug related, said Mr Smellie.
"The city is safe until 9pm… it gets ugly and it is mostly alcohol related, people throwing up or pissing in doorways," Mr Smellie said, “Most people in apartments, certainly at my age, aren't up at the time of night when it is happening, but we see the carnage the next morning.”
Miss Fletcher said once she feels safe inside the building, but has encountered a few issues with people outside her building.
“I couldn’t get in the building some days because [people outside the door] kept harassing me.”
She said there are some interesting characters inside her building too, but once she is inside her apartment she knows she is safe.
Other residents have reported feeling perfectly safe when out and about.
Mrs van Ryn said she often goes for walks or bike rides through Albert Park and down to the waterfront and never feels unsafe.
She said some beggars can be intimidating and there were certain areas she would avoid after dark, but she feels safe.
The New Zealand Police were asked to comment on the safety of the central city, but a spokesperson said there were too many variables to be able to respond to the request.
The solution for the old and the young
Members of all social groups make up the 42,000 people living in apartments in central Auckland. Old people, young people, singles and families are all represented by those owning a slice of paradise high in the sky.
Data sourced from Statistics New Zealand shows that in the 2013, there were 15,645 apartments in buildings with four or more storeys, this compared to 9,876 apartments in 2006.
In the Waitemata Local Board area, the area which incorporates the central city, Ponsonby, Freemans Bay and Grey Lynn, there were 11,991 apartments in 2013.
People living alone accounted for just over a third of the 15,645 apartments, couples were the second highest represented group with just under 30 per cent and groups of unrelated people or flatting made up just shy of 15 per cent.
Craig Watkins, director of Apartmint Real Estate, said the main group buying apartments are baby-boomers.
"Their kids have left home, they've still got their health so they’re looking for something different and they’re looking for apartments," Mr Watkins said, “they can live in these spaces until they go into a home or into a box.”
Increasingly young professionals are buying apartments, and the mindset of needing a backyard is rapidly fading, said Mr Watkins
“With the next generation, everything is instant, they don’t want to be sitting, waiting in traffic, they want to be right there.”
For the younger generation, living right in the central city may not be a high priority, but access to good public transport is vital.
“We are currently working on a development in Kingsland, right near the train station and most of those have been sold to younger people,” Mr Watkins said.
The chasm between the neighbourhood and the neighbourhood school
Good quality education should be a right for all young people, but in the central city there may not be enough schools to cope with the growing number of residents.
Data from the Ministry of Education shows that there are only a handful of Primary Schools and even fewer Secondary Schools in the central city area and the surrounding suburbs.
Freemans Bay Primary School on Wellington Street currently educates most of the children that live in apartments according to Mr Smellie.
In 2015, Freemans Bay Primary School had 478 children on its roll, up 43 students since 2011.
The school is undergoing a $19.2M upgrade which will lift its capacity to 600 students and offer an improved Māori Immersion Unit.
Other primary school options available to central city parents are Parnell School, Ponsonby Primary School, Newton Central School and Kadimah School, a state-integrated school with a special Jewish character on Greys Avenue in the central city.
When it comes to secondary schools, there are less options and almost no options for boys.
Auckland Girls’ Grammar School on Howe Street has a roll of 1359 female students. This total has dropped from 1429 students in 2011. It caters for students’ year 9-13 and has a mostly Pasifika and Māori student base.
St Mary’s College is also an option for female students. A roll of 965 in 2015, up from 826 in 2011.
For boys, the closest school is St Paul’s College on Richmond Road, Grey Lynn. In 2015 it had a roll of 268 students, up 66 from 2011.
The alternative option is ACG Parnell and ACG Senior College; the latter has had a steadily decreasing roll since 2011.
Mr Smellie said that schooling was a prominent issue for apartment dwellers.
"A lot of parents are taking their kids to school in Freeman’s Bay, which is quite isolated from the city, the motorway creates a canyon between the neighbourhood and the neighbourhood school," Mr Smellie said.
Mrs van Ryn moved into her apartment when her son was 14. He had been attending ACG Parnell, but made the decision to swap to home schooling.
The Ministry of Education currently has no plans to build new schools in the central city, instead they are focusing on expanding the number of classrooms at the existing schools.
“Our current projections do not indicate a new school in the CBD of Auckland in the short to medium term. At this stage we consider we can provide adequate additional capacity within the existing schools in the area for projected student numbers,” said Jerome Sheppard, head of education infrastructure service at the Ministry of Education.
Mr Smellie said schooling was one issue why young families do not stay in apartments or the central city while their children are at school age.
“There’s a number of people moving in, having kids and by the time they reach school age, they’re ready to move out again,” Mr Smellie said.
'Essentially outdoor is indoor;' what to expect when you're expecting
Apartments come in all shapes and sizes. Many are built with a specific group of purchasers in mind.
A leading apartment salesmen said that Kiwi families are not ready to be fully immersed into the high rise lifestyle.
Craig Watkins, director of Apartmint Real Estate, said New Zealander’s are attracted to townhouses that come with a small plot of land where the kids can kick a ball around.
"Overseas, families live in apartments, that might just be one step too far currently."
Mr Watkins said the mindset of needing a backyard is changing quickly and the next generation are increasingly looking into buying apartments.
And it’s all do with space.
Mr Watkins said families need space, and lots of it to live comfortably.
It's not all about families, Mr Watkins said every age group has particulars they look for when buying an apartment.
Retirees want east-facing apartments to get the early morning sun, Mr Watkins said these people are early risers and do not want the afternoon sun because they will get “cooked”.
Young professionals opt for west-facing apartments, with big decks and outdoor spaces where they can come home from work and have a wine in the afternoon sun.
Popular apartment buildings tend to be located near parks, restaurants or the waterfront, giving dwellers something nice to look at or somewhere easy to go.
Miss Fletcher said being close to the nightlife was an important factor in choosing where to rent.
“Not having to pay for public transport was a huge plus for us as a group.”
Having great food on the doorstep means some apartment dwellers hardly use their kitchens.
Mrs van Ryn said she and her husband eat out most nights of the week because its convenient and there is so much variety in the central city.
“We wander down the street and there is something different on every corner.”
Boutique apartments are also proving popular for those willing to part with bigger sums of money.
Ludo Campbell-Reid, lead city planner at the Auckland Design Office, said they are lots of car parking buildings in the city that are “ugly” and could do with a facelift.
He used the old Victoria Park car parking building on Victoria Street West as an example.
Developers have turned the top few floors of the car park into boutique apartments looking over the park and the viaduct.
A move towards these boutique smaller buildings has been praised by Mr Watkins.
“In the last [apartment] cycle, all we built was shoe box apartments that suited students and foreign investors. This cycle, we are trying to challenge that model by promoting more high-end apartment buildings.”
The changing face of the inner-suburbs
Wandering out into the city-fringe suburbs, the effects of the fast growing central city are grand.
The blueprint for future Auckland, the Unitary Plan, is set to pave the way for at least 400,000 new homes to meet demand over the next 30 years.
The Proposed Unitary Plan looked at the physical land across the Auckland region, and decided how we can better use it.
"The plan identifies areas at the edges of the existing urban area which are suitable for more urbanisation, and by allowing great intensification of existing urban areas," said Celia Davison, Auckland Council's manager of the Unitary Plan.
This means inner-city suburbs such as Ponsonby could be in for a makeover, with an increase in apartment buildings.
Under the Proposed Unitary Plan, Ponsonby Road is considered a “Town Centre Zone.”
The former Ponsonby Fire Station at 182 Ponsonby Road is about to go on the market, and a tall apartment building could replace it.
Earlier in 2016, the Ponsonby Fire Stations trucks and staff relocated to a new station on Williamson Avenue in Grey Lynn, and Fire Service property manager Steve Pogson has confirmed that the old site will soon be sold.
The site is 1400 square metres on the corner of Ponsonby Road and Lincoln Street. In July 2014, it was valued at over $4,000,000.
If a developer was to buy the property, they would have no issues under the Proposed Unitary Plan to build an apartment complex between four to eight stories on the land and possibly even higher if “special circumstances apply where other building heights are appropriate,” according to the Unitary Plan document H10 Business – Town Centre Zone.
Auckland Council’s Heritage arm confirmed the building was not historic and could be demolished.
Peri Buckley, team leader of heritage information management at Auckland Council, said the building itself was not historic but it did fall under the Ponsonby Road “Special Character Area” in the Unitary Plan.
Special Character Areas work to retain the character of identified areas in Auckland.
“Assessments of proposals for development and modifications to buildings within the special character area will be considered against the relevant policies and special character area statements,” according to Unitary Plan document D18 Special Character Areas Overlay – Residential and Business.
The potential buyer of 182 Ponsonby Road would have to ensure the demolition of the current building would not “erode the identified special character values of the area”, according to the document D18.
Any new building on the site would also have to “maintain the integrity of the context of the area by providing quality design, materials, colour and decoration which respects and enhances the built form and streetscape of the area”.
This is just one example of a site that has been unlocked for development under the proposed unitary plan, but development that is already underway on new apartments in the central city is proving a nuisance for residents.
The constant hum of construction
Kathy Ross' apartment is spacious, the lounge and kitchen are connected and there are big windows that look out to the city.
As we sat and chatted, there was a constant hum of construction. Banging, crashing, cutting and yelling, it is the soundtrack to central Auckland.
To name a few construction projects, Fletcher Construction re-development of the Downtown Shopping Centre, Quay West Hotel revamp, and Naylor Love are working on a new block of apartments on the corner of Albert Street and Swanson Street.
The Naylor Love Construction is what Ms Ross can hear predominately, the apartment building is being construction on the plot of land right next to the Prince Albert Apartments, but luckily for Ms Ross, it is on the other side of the building.
She spoke highly of Naylor Love Construction.
"If they ever go over time, they ring me and tell me what is happening," she said, “occasionally they work Sunday’s and sometimes they work late., that’s just the way it is.”
However, those working on the City Rail Link are less abiding by the rules.
“They’re a law to themselves.”
An Auckland Transport spokesperson said that the noise could be coming from any of the construction sites in the vicinity of Albert Street, not just the City Rail Link enabling works.
The Council Controlled Organisation has received 21 noise complaints about their City Rail Link work since November 2015.
The Auckland Transport spokesperson gave an example of permitted and notified Watercare night works carried out in February 2016.
“At 12:30am it was determined that a stainless steel pipe was not able to be cut using a standard chain cutter and noisier equipment was used. This was not predicted.”
The spokesperson said the contractor has ensured that they will use higher noise baffling preparation for future noisy works.
Anybody who commutes to through the inner-suburbs into the central city knows that construction is a constant, but new figures from real estate firm CBRE show there is less construction than expected.
In the past four years, 31 apartment projects across Auckland, totalling 2,044 units have been abandoned.
“This equates to 15 and 16 per cent respectively of the total number of apartments launched,” the report by CBRE’s Zoltan Moricz and Tamba Carleton said.
“It does not mean that development plans for the site of this project are completely abandoned… a number of the abandoned projects have subsequently been relaunched as another project on the same site.”
Since early 2013, 206 projects comprising of 13,135 units have been launched across Auckland, of these to date, 47 projects and 2,455 units have been completed.
How many more people can the central city hold?
One of the world's leading city planners said there is no limit to the amount of people who can live in central Auckland.
Ludo Campbell-Reid said while there is no limit, we need to start looking at improving infrastructure to accommodate the influx of people.
He said Auckland had come a long way over the past ten years in terms of making the city a people-friendly city from a car-friendly city.
"We now have a beautiful waterfront where people can wander and socialise, we have a bright pink cycle way encouraging people to get out of their cars and start biking," said Mr Campbell-Reid.
Rosemary Goodyear, from Statistics New Zealand, studied the trends in apartment developments in a similar time period in the past ten years.
“There was a big rise in the number of apartments being built during the mid-2000s, trends suggest this was because of an increase in the number studying and working in central Auckland.”
The research suggests the increasing number of apartments relates to population growth.
For the city to reach optimum liveability, Mr Campbell-Reid said it needs more green spaces.
“We have a grand plan to turn Victoria Street into one long green space, connecting Albert Park in the east and Victoria Park in the west.”
As for Miss Fletcher, a young person maturing in the bustling central city, she said that apartment life may not be for her.
“The lack of sunlight downs my spirits… and its difficult to get outside when I don’t have classes.”
She plans to join the masses pushes out Auckland’s urban boundaries, she is moving to the suburbs to take up residence in a house with a backyard and plenty of sunlight.
Would she ever move back into an apartment?
“I appreciate the small space… but it would need to be a nice big apartment.”
