Seascape was meant to be New Zealand’s highest residential building — but construction has stopped, thanks to a feud between the builder and developer.
It was being marketed as the “very best lifestyle imaginable” by Sotheby’s real estate; an architectural masterpiece due for completion by “Q2 2024”.
But that date had come and gone, and the Seascape tower in downtown Auckland sat unfinished after work was shut down last month over a dispute between the developer and the builder.
The empty building site on Customs Street East was closed off and guarded by security workers, with no word on when work would restart.
There was no mention of that on either Sotheby’s or on Seascape’s own website promoting the country’s tallest residential building, with 221 apartments priced between $990,000 for a studio to up to $22 million for a penthouse. That price varied widely depending on which story was read.
Sotheby’s senior director international business, Scarlett Wood, was unaware that the article on the website did not include the latest development or that the completion date had expired, when RNZ’s The Detail called her on Friday.
She said she would be telling prospective buyers of the pause in building when she travelled to London this month to promote it to expat Kiwis and international buyers.
Wood said she would ask the marketing department to update the article on the website to reflect a later completion date.
She confirmed a statement from the developer Shundi Customs that work would restart in the next few months and be completed in early 2026.
The NZ Herald’s property editor Anne Gibson said the dispute between the builder, China Construction and Shundi Customs was over the finish date and a payment issue.
“China Construction wants $33 million from Shundi Customs. It claims it has reached a point in the contract where it is owed that and Shundi Customs is withholding money,” she says.
The Building Disputes Tribunal has ruled in favour of China Construction, but Shundi Customs is refusing to pay.
“It was not forthcoming, which is why in late August China Construction wrote to all the subcontractors suspending work, telling them to leave the job.”
Work started on the skyscraper in 2017 after Shanghai-owned Shundi struck a deal with state-owned China Construction, the world’s largest building company by revenue.
Shundi has two other developments in New Zealand, but Seascape is China Construction’s first in the country.
“It came to New Zealand specifically for this Seascape project, so this is quite a big deal,” said Gibson.
That early engagement between the developer and builder is highly regarded in the industry and often leads to a much more successful relationship, said Gibson, who started hearing of a slowdown on the project in May.
It is not the first stumbling block for Seascape, which was originally due to finish in 2021, she said. In the early stages the Ministry for Business Innovation and Employment ruled that the fire safety plans did not comply, forcing the developer to apply for a new building consent with modified fire safety aspects.
The tallest is also said to run the deepest
More recently, the five-level basement, said to be the deepest in Auckland, ran into problems after defects were picked up in the diaphragm construction.
Gibson said the suspension of work means the project will not be finished by the end of the year as expected, leaving dozens of construction workers and the buyers of the apartments in limbo.
She explained to The Detail why it was very rare for a commercial project to be left unfinished in New Zealand.
“For us it’s a real shock but actually overseas it’s not a real shock, it does happen.”
Meanwhile, the building has been deemed secure by Auckland Council structural engineers who carried out a floor by floor inspection inside and outside.
The deputy mayor Desley Simpson said the inspection was so detailed that each screw was checked to make sure that it could withstand being out in the open.
She said the inspection picked up some minor details such as a pile of scaffolding that needed to be removed.
Simpson said it will be at least three months before work started up again but it could be a year.
By Sharon Bretkelly of rnz.co.nz