Templeton Group has uplifted its 160m2 sales suite and information centre from its location in College Road in Stonefields, and transported it 1km to a site overlooking the three lakes of Maungarei Springs, where it will be the focal point of the new development.
The move was undertaken by Randle House Removals using a new house trailer with an electronic steering system, made by TRT in Hamilton.
The trailer is one of only a handful in the country, and each pair of wheels can be independently controlled via a screen in the cab.
For this move, an operator walked behind the trailer controlling all trailer wheels remotely via a controller.
“Our brief was to move the building through short residential streets without damaging grass, trees, signage or cars which, despite notices, had been left parked on the road,” said Zane Randle of Randle House Removals.
“Without ESS it would have been difficult if not impossible to move the sales suite along these roads without damaging something.”
Templeton development director for Lakeside, Katelyn Orton, said that once a deck is added to the sales suite, visitors will be able to better appreciate the views across the lakes to the basalt cliffs. Completion will trigger a full campaign launch for the master-planned development.
“As the stages of the development are completed, Lakeside will emerge as an elegant dress circle facing an imposing basalt rock face and defining an amphitheatre that surrounds the lakes fed by Maungarei Springs. Nestled into the parklike surrounds of the “watchful mountain” and guarded by it, the development will combine elegance, amenity and natural beauty, looking out across an astonishing vista of lakes, parks, landscaped courtyards, dark cliffs and wetland boardwalks.
“These homes will be defined by their proximity to this fine, accessible, wildlife-rich, spring-fed urban wetland,” said Orton. “The owners will enjoy both contemplative pleasures, as they look out over it, with superb recreational opportunities at their very doorstep.”
The development was designed and master-planned by award-winning architects, Warren and Mahoney.
The lakes, formed from the quarry pits which yielded the stone used for decades to build New Zealand’s highways, represent part of a new and powerful global tradition, where last century’s industrial zones – like New York’s High Line, Seattle’s Gas Works Park, the Promenade Plantée in Paris – are creatively reclaimed and given new life.
Once the development has been fully sold, Templeton will move the building to a new location and gift it to all the residents of Stonefields for use as a community centre.
“This will be yet another amenity that strengthens community ties in Lakeside and Stonefields,” said Orton.
