Harbour Quays Development Achieves Major Milestone

Media Release
28 September 2006

Harbour Quays Development Achieves a Major Milestone

CentrePort’s waterfront development, Harbour Quays, has achieved a major milestone with the granting of resource consent for the construction of a new purpose-built building for Bank of New Zealand.

To be located at the city end of the Harbour Quays development opposite the Railway Station, the six level building is expected to house 1,000 bank staff currently located in a number of buildings in Wellington. The building will be accessed from a new intersection on Waterloo Quay into the Harbour Quays development area.

“We believed the project to be fully compliant. We are delighted with the prospect of having BNZ in our development to complement our other tenants who include the New Zealand Rugby Union, Statistics New Zealand and TelstraClear.

“This new building will represent everything that’s good about Harbour Quays”, says Nigel Gould, Chairman of CentrePort, the Harbour Quays developers.

“It will be a modern, state-of-the-art building, with a large floor plate. The office accommodation will be complemented with ground floor retail of compatible use. The type of space we will create for BNZ is not currently available anywhere else in the city.

“Large floor plates in a low rise configuration enable tenants to bring staff together in a common location which helps with business integration. It also blends well with the surrounding environment and is ideal for large organisations like BNZ,” says Mr Gould.

Bank of New Zealand Chief Executive Peter Thodey in commenting on the decision says that the Bank is very pleased to be involved in this development.

“It will bring a large percentage of our people together on one site in a world-class building.

“We wanted to get away from the traditional monolithic bankers-box style of building. We believe a building like this helps us attract and retain the best people by providing premium working conditions.

“It also allows the Bank to remain part of Wellington’s business community which might not have otherwise been the case if this opportunity had not arisen.

“The building is being designed to a minimum of four stars Australian Greenstar rating. This emphasis on environmental considerations is important for us and our staff,” says Mr Thodey.

ENDS

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