eKourier Oct 2015

Wellington, Solid as a Rock FEATURES

W e might be right in a warehouse enterprise space, and you will find various definitions of what constitutes the meaning of a space in a standard Oxford English or Webster’s Dictionary. Our customers also have an intriguing and never ending way of defining our storage spaces with their own defini- tions ranging from a cage, storage box (certainly never confusing us with a merchandise box sale), a room, or just a ‘thingo’. A unit is defined as an individual thing or person forming an individual component of any larger or more complex compartment. Whereas a locker is a cupboard or compartment, a cage being a box or enclosure having openwork for confining or carrying any animal or prisoners, and a warehouse seen as a large building to store or distribute goods for sale. However, if there was an anecdotal word for all these definitions, they could all be defined as purely a space – a storage space. ‘Space’ definition can be related to a storage unit area or storage space but try explaining to some of your customers that our storage spaces can purely be a continuous area or expanse which is available or unoccu- pied, and see the intriguing reactions you’ll receive. With this in mind, our experience developing centre’s with varying space sizes, with a capacity to place all types and sizes of goods in our storage spaces makes what consti- tutes a storage space and its definition irrelevant. When is it just a space? When a potential customer enquires asking for a unit, locker, cage, warehouse or thingo. Wayne Birch VIC Operations Manager LOOKING FOR A THINGO? thinking that the defini- tion of a storage space is a unit, locker, or even

D uring the last three months, the majority of the earthquake strengthening work required to bring building three at Wellington up to standard has now been completed. This work was required for the new building standards in New Zealand resulting mainly from the Christchurch earthquakes in 2011. The strengthening work in technical terms was to increase the seismic bracing capacity of Building three by installing steel Eccentrically Braced Frames (EBFs) and reinforced concrete walls along with reinforced concrete foundation footings into the basement of the building. The new design also enabled a completely new floor to be added to increase the maximum lettable area. When this type of work is undertaken on an existing building that you did not originally build, there is always some unexpected challenges that pop up along the way, such as a false wall with hidden electrics behind it, or finding some beams missing that were supposed to be there according to the existing plans. However the contractor employed to complete the project, Trademark Construction have done a commendable job to date, in overcoming these issues and have maintained the timetable to ensure the completion date at the end of October remains. The final unit layout over the four new floors will result in 141 new units, adding 2,294 square metres to the Wellington M.L.A. The average unit size is 16 square metres with a bias toward larger size units to improve the centre mix which is currently overweighted by smaller unit sizes.

With the whole centre built into the corner of a hill, a natural sloping driveway at the rear of the property has allowed the third level in building one and the fifth level in building three to be accessed by this driveway, providing some added benefit of GR floor priced units and some larger enterprise space units. Building three will also have GR floor units at the front of the building, opening out onto the main road. The GR floor in building three has only 17 units at an average of 27 square metres, due to the demand for large ground floor units in the Wellington market place. These will definately rent up fast. The final unit layout over the 4 new floors will result in 141 new units, adding 2,294 square metres to the Wellington M.L.A. The tender for unit fit out has been finalised and we have asked for fast track Council permission to start the fit out on the completed basement and fifth floor levels, to ensure we bring these new units to the marketplace as soon as possible. So there is exciting times ahead for the Wellington Team, with the current occupancy of the existing buildings passing 80%. The completion of building three should see a continuation of rent up as increased demand for larger size units in the Wellington marketplace grows. Andrew Kirkham NZ Operations Manager ‘

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14 Kennards Kourier October 2015