Onwards, not upwards for Remarks Park
Remarkables Park Ltd has lowered the height of its planned tech hub building, but the company’s plans for the area remain as lofty as ever.
The $45 million Research & Innovation Queenstown facility, backed by a $22.5m Government loan, has been redesigned in the face of rising construction costs.
Original plans were for the building to be across five levels, including a basement level, but it is now three-and-a-half.
“It’s a more cost-effective design and more efficient,” Remarkables Park Group Executive Chairman Alastair Porter says.
“As you can imagine, building material costs had gone up dramatically since we designed the building. This also enables us to build with just one static crane, rather than several cranes coming and going.”
The redesign hasn’t made a great deal of difference to the floor space, with has been reduced from the original 6000sqm to 5400sqm.
“The tall part of the original design covered less than half the footprint, whereas the new top level covers the entire footprint.”
Porter estimates rising costs would have seen the project come in 10% over budget before the redesign.
“That’s not insignificant when you’re talking about a $45m project.”
The plans have been approved by Queenstown Lakes District Council and Crown Infrastructure Partners, who are co-funding the building on behalf of the Government.
When it was announced in May 2021, the Research & Innovation (R&I) building was seen as a key driver for the diversification of Queenstown’s economy away from the pandemic-hit tourism industry.
The aim remains to attract world-class talent to the region, creating high value and low environmental impact industries.
Finding Research & Innovation tenants hasn’t been an issue.
“We’ve had a lot of interest and we’ve got some fairly major players that are working out how much space they’re going to take.
“Not surprisingly, it’s mostly Kiwi companies at this stage but there are some internationals. There are some quite well-known names and some you won’t have heard of, but that’s the nature of start-ups.”
The Remarkable Park Zone covers 150 hectares of land. Development began with the town centre and retail precinct, which was later sold, and expanded east with a mix of commercial, recreation, education and accommodation buildings.
They include Wakatipu High School and four hotels that have opened in recent years - the Ramada, La Quinta by Wyndham, Holiday Inn and Quest - supported by various ground floor tenants.
The R&I building, a stone’s throw from Remarkables Park Ltd’s own shiny glass corner building, which has Frankton Library on its ground floor, will be another anchor for Hawthorne Drive / Red Oaks Drive block.
A second building complementing the R&I building is still in the works, although its likely to be offices and ground floor tenancies, and a more familiar rectangle-footprint design.
Across the other side of Hawthorne Drive towards the Queenstown Airport, Remarkables Park Ltd has quietly been finishing roads and infrastructure works to provide around 60 more commercial lots.
It’s fundamentally a huge expansion of the successful Red Oaks Drive development, tenanted by Game Over, SITE Trampoline, Chipmunks, various gyms and martial arts clubs, and others.
“We’ve done a lot of work over there and have a range of businesses ready to go in, but I’ll leave it to them to make their own announcements.
“It’s commercial recreation, similar to the businesses already there. It’s resource consented for 60 individual lots but that changes depending on what people want, as some will want a larger lot.”
And both a conference centre and Remarkables gondola, big projects announced pre-pandemic, are still on the table.
“Covid put a hold on both conference centre and gondola plans. We are again working on the gondola plans, that’s a work in progress.
“We absolutely fully support NZSki’s bid to open up The Doolans [the valley beyond Remarkables ski area] for skiing and if that does happen, a gondola would be very complementary.
“On the conference side, we’ve put a large meeting room in the innovation building, which will be able to cater for around 200 people.
“That’s an interim position. It’s good to have a meeting facility of that size, with food and beverage adjacent to it. Ultimately, when we can get the conference centre up, that can fold into more tenant space.”
The R&I centre and second building, with their focus on cutting edge businesses, some backed by venture capital, could also be draw a new wave of conferences to Queenstown, making a stand-alone centre a viable proposition once again.
Meanwhile, foundations have been dug for the R&I building, designed by award-winning Otago architects Mason & Wales. Backfilling is in progress and Cook Brothers Construction expect to begin on the structure itself in the new year. It should take around 16 months to complete.
