Aucklanders Prefer Sale of Car-Park Over Queen Elizabeth Sq
Aucklanders Prefer Sale of Car-Park Over Queen Elizabeth Square
The two kiwi businessmen who have made an
unconditional offer of $75 million cash to buy a downtown
car-parking building from Auckland Council will meet with
Auckland Mayor Len Brown and senior council officers on
Monday morning to discuss their proposal.
The offer,
by the Auckland entrepreneurs behind the city’s landmark
City Works Depot precinct, James Brown, 39 of Freemans Bay,
and Simon Rowntree, 39 of Orakei, is $10 million above
valuation and expires at close of business on
Friday.
“This is an outstanding offer from the
council’s perspective: cash, unconditional, with a quick
settlement and a legally binding commitment not to increase
casual parking prices above the rate of inflation for at
least five years. It is also clearly well above valuation,
as evidenced by no other property investor coming forward to
match it over the last 24 hours,” a spokesperson for Mr
Brown and Mr Rowntree said today.
“James and Simon
are very encouraged by the mayor agreeing to meet them and
their lawyers so quickly after they made their offer, and by
his comments on TV3’s The Nation this morning that he is
open to divesting the car-park to help fast-track his
Auckland City Rail Link, which they strongly
support.”
The spokesperson said Mr Brown and Mr
Rowntree were also encouraged by a UMR Research poll of 500
Aucklanders that they commissioned, which indicated a
majority is much more comfortable with the Council divesting
the car-park to Auckland businesspeople than Queen Elizabeth
Square or Queen’s Wharf to foreign investors.
The
poll, carried out last week before the offer was made
public, found that while Aucklanders tend to oppose asset
sales, they are very much more opposed to selling Queen
Elizabeth Square or Queen’s Wharf than the car-parking
building.
While 62% of Aucklanders oppose selling
Queen Elizabeth Square and 56% oppose selling Queen’s
Wharf, only 41% oppose the sale of the car-parking building,
and 32% support it.
When asked which asset they would
prefer sold to help fund the rail link, 51% opted for the
car-parking building, with just 21% choosing Queen’s Wharf
and 15% favouring Queen Elizabeth Square.
When asked
who they would be comfortable selling an asset to, 91% said
Auckland business interests, 41% said they would be
comfortable seeing assets sold to Australian business
interests and only 28% would be comfortable with Chinese
business interests.
In his comments on The Nation this
morning, the mayor appeared open-minded about the process to
manage the sale, although he suggested it might be
protracted.
“James and Simon’s offer expires at
close of business on Friday and they will not participate in
a protracted process. This matter will need to be resolved
this week,” the spokesperson
said.
END