Whangārei family's sustainable renovation breathes new life into CBD

NZ Herald

16-05-2025

She had been working with Ngāti Hine Forestry Trust on potential extracts from trees on its land, and when she found out the building the trust tenanted was for sale, she quickly declared her love for it.
Gregory said the 1960s building had potential but was very tired, with an unusable courtyard, 14 different air conditioning units and the top floor leaking from internal gutters.
'Every time it rained a bit more water got inside,' he said.
'But if you squinted you could see there was really good bones - there was potential.'
The couple moved into the apartment with Mary Smith and her dog Jaz, initially anxious about the large change from the country.
But all quickly found they liked the convenience of inner-city living, with almost everything available within walking distance: including events, art galleries, film nights and an extensive array of eateries.
They have also not had any problems with a lack of safety or excessive noise.
Mary Smith soon decided she should be putting her green thumbs to use on the green space in the neighbouring car park and Whangārei District Council gave its blessing.
She transformed what was an overgrown and weedy grass area with hundreds of plants grown from seed, with the gardening soon spreading across the car park with layers of yuccas, flax, hebes, succulents and other shrubs.
Mary Smith said she gets plenty of positive feedback, especially from regular car park users.
'One lady said, 'I love coming to work on Monday seeing what you've done over the weekend'.'
Scroll through the photo gallery to see more detail of the renovations:
Image 1 of 5: Pete Gregory and Jules Smith are proud of the renovation, which has created an industrial chic office space upstairs. Photo / Denise Piper
With the family's love of outdoors evident, the first stage of the Vinery Lane redevelopment was to transform the outdoor area in 2021.
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The couple bought a sliver of land from the council's car park and built an engineered retaining wall, complete with private car park and Balinese-inspired sheltered courtyard on top.
In 2022, stage two of the development saw the lower-level office, previously occupied by a small law firm, transformed into a modern, open-plan 50sq m office space.
The final, and biggest, stage of the redevelopment took place after Ngāti Hine Forestry Trust ended its tenancy in June 2024.
Jules Smith and Gregory took the opportunity to modernise the space, upgrade the seismic rating of the building, and replace the problematic roof and internal gutters.
Using local firm DHS Construction, the final stage involved tenting the building, removing the roof and adding considerable structural steel.
The new space is a modern, industrial chic office space with exposed metal beams, bagged brick and vintage kitchen light shades from Bali.
With the carpet freshly installed, the couple hope to lease the office space now it has been finished.
But the finished building is just one half of the renovation story: the other half is the way materials were reused or recycled during the project.
With Jules Smith's new business, Again, focused on reusing textiles and the couple discovering 40 to 50% of landfill waste is from construction, they decided to recycle where possible.
'We didn't feel it was right for us to make an improvement to the building but at the same time add to the waste stream going to landfill, when it could be distributed around the community,' she said.
Recycling the old materials soon became Gregory's fulltime job, including painstakingly cleaning 7000 bricks, 4.5 tonnes of acoustic ceiling tiles, 14 rimu doors and 250m of Oregon roof beams.
A lot of the materials went to projects around Northland, such as tiny homes, while most of the metal could be recycled, he said.
Innovation even saw things like 3cu m of mortar rubble being used for hard-fill and treated timber being used by mental health provider Ka Puta Ka Ora Emerge Aotearoa for raised garden planters.
The project also used recycled wall panels saveBOARD, made from old milk cartons, to further increase the recycling.
Like many grand designs, the project ran over budget and over time, but the final cost was still less than a new building and something that will stand the test of time, Gregory said.
'There's a lot of tired commercial buildings in Whangārei that haven't been shown the love: this is a good example of what you can do to transform it.'