35: A Corner to Remember
What if a flatiron building could rise on every forgotten corner?
Continuing the series on forgotten spaces, the corner site at the bottom of Anzac Avenue where it meets Customs Street and Beach Road is a great example of a prime development site that has remained vacant for years, with a holding income from car parking and billboards.
Sites like this have become so ubiquitous and even invisible that as we move about the city we might not even realise that they are a development site at all. But hidden behind all those signs, fences, rubbled building foundations and overgrown vegetation lies a prime corner site just waiting for a multi-level building to rise and redefine the landmark corner.
Wouldn’t it be great if these sites, which have remained vacant for the last 2 or 3 decades, started to be redeveloped for higher value and higher intensity uses? It would be good to see this happen as part of the next phase of Auckland’s urban renaissance.
Stuart Houghton 2014
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Like this
http://architecturenow.co.nz/articles/heart-of-hamilton/
and the Wintec corner building next to it.
Well both Auckland and Wellington have similar MLC buildings, and, without the height, there’s always the Town Hall for a triangular plan. MLC is just across Queen St from the Town Hall. In Wellington it’s on Lambton Quay.
AKL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_Life_%26_Citizens_Assurance_Company_Building
Welly: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_Life_%26_Citizens_Assurance_Company_Building
The links are the same and both for Wellington.
Quite right, and they both show both, so all good.
The CV is $3.7M and rates $37K, so the owner must be charging a lot for billboards and parking. Does anyone remember a building there?
I wonder if a building there was knocked down to create the slip lane?
NM. Auckland Council GIS shows vacant since 1940. Pretty safe to assume, then, it has always been vacant since Anzac Ave only dates from 1916/17 or so.
Maybe a building was demolished to make way for Anzac Ave.
Or this wee sliver of land in Wellington developed in the 2000’s. The ‘flatiron’ shape makes for panoramic apartments at the sharp end.
https://maps.google.co.nz/?ll=-41.27245,174.777954&spn=0.001167,0.002492&t=h&z=19&layer=c&cbll=-41.27245,174.777954&panoid=L7PBtMS9Riv3340Jil7Zqg&cbp=12,163.35,,0,-22.5
There’s already an example of a sharp cornered building in AK – corner of Hobson St and Fanshawe St, the President Plaza. Not awe inspiring but still a good use of the site.
The building at Customs Street/Eden Cres would also be a good choice for a flatiron building. What is there at the moment is rather dull.