36 | Apartment living at its very best The Kahu Development is set across two buildings that take up a full block of Long Bay Village. T T Hugh de Lacy McCore Group: Kahu Development DEVELOPMENT They may be a bit reluctant to forego the old stand-alone house on the quarter-acre section, but the Kahu Development being built by the McCore Group in Auckland’s Long Bay Village is showing Kiwis there’s a lot more to apartment living than they might have thought. The Kahu Development comprises 42 north-facing terrace homes at the centre of the village within an easy walk of Long Bay Regional Park and Long Bay Beach. The project, which McCore Group is delivering for Auckland’s property-developing Templeton Group, offers an architect-designed contemporary environment in the centre of the existing vibrant Long Bay Village with its cafes, restaurants and shops. Kahu is set across two buildings that take up a full block of the village and are built across a central mews access-way on a podium in a park-like setting. Each unit has its own entrance and dedicated parking space either in the podium, on the underground level or, in the case of the larger dwellings, in tandem garages with internal access. The homes range in size from one to four bedrooms, with a safe walk for kids to Long Bay Primary School or Long Bay College, two of the highest-rating in the country, and a quick bus trip to Massey University’s Auckland campus. One of the country’s biggest retail precincts is just a short drive away at Albany, and there are bus services into the Auckland CBD. For McCore Group, the Kahu Development is the first it’s done for Templeton Group, but it has another project for the same client under way at Long Bay, a 21-unit development called The Light Box. McCore Group was founded by Michael Wang, Mike Gibson and Matt Borg in 2017 as the result of repeated discussions over several months about the messy state of the building industry at the time, and how they thought they could do better. “So in the end we stopped complaining and put our money where our mouth was and made it happen,” Mike Gibson says. And what’s happened since has been rapid growth to a staff of 35 planners and project managers who to date have completed no fewer than 16 projects worth more than $150 million. Mike’s the fourth generation of a building contract company, a fifth-generation New Zealander who’s been in the construction industry for 23 years. Michael Wang is a highly experienced builder and businessman who got the company going by securing the head contracting role for the $7m four-storey The Glen apartment complex in Glenfield, Auckland. Matt Borg spent time overseeing head-contracts for Michael Wang before McCore Group was formed, and earlier he was himself quantity surveyor building London’s Olympic Stadium for the 2012 Games. Mike Gibson sees the Kahu Development as a transitional form of housing between the quarter-acre section and the multi-unit apartment block. “Housing based on the quarter-acre section is now too costly, but Zealanders still want that sense of space and privacy in a home, but at a reasonable price and with a high degree of comfort and close to services,” he says. “Developments like Kahu seem to fit the middle ground in between.” Kahu Development, designed by the Wellington firm of Plus Architecture, is heading towards completion of the first half of the project early next year, with the second half to follow later. “Housing based on the quarter-acre section is now too costly, but Zealanders still want that sense of space and privacy in a home, but at a reasonable price and with a high degree of comfort and close to services.” • High-Rise Apartments • Multi-Unit Residential • Retirement Villages • Remediation Projects • Townhouse Developments • Stand Alone Dwellings A NZ owned & operated Main Contractor specialising in: SAFETY • QUALITY • PRIDE • LEADERSHIP www.mccore.co.nz | info@mccore.co.nz | 0800 995 999 Proudly supporting McCore Group & Long Bay Village Your Intumescent & General Painting Specialist • Residential & Commercial Painting • Intumescent Coatings • Gib Stopping 021 283 1400 sales@sharkeyservices.net www.sharkeyservices.net Sharkey Services Ltd.
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