A new crane is towering over the Hastings skyline — three years after Cyclone Gabrielle devastated the Hawke’s Bay city — marking the start of construction on a four-storey, 5,000sqm mass timber office building that developer Tumu Property will own, whilst the council leases back the space it can no longer afford to build itself. Hastings District Council sold the former Heretaunga House site to Tumu Property last year for $2.5 million, securing a 1,950sqm lease at $830,000 per year in return, under a sale-and-leaseback structure.
The arrangement keeps capital off the council’s books at a time when Hastings rates rose 8.7 per cent, 19 per cent and 15 per cent across 2023, 2024 and 2025, respectively, as cyclone recovery costs bite. A council spokesperson said it was selected as the most cost-effective outcome for ratepayers: “It enables private business to invest in the development of a quality office building, adding capacity to a constrained office accommodation market in Hastings without the council needing to invest.”
As many as 80 council staff, currently split across three city locations, will consolidate into a single central office once construction is complete, replacing lease costs across those commercial properties with a single tenancy. Tumu Property will occupy 600sqm of the building as its new headquarters, leasing the remainder to additional commercial tenants.
Tumu director Hamish Frame said the project is a deliberate showcase for locally manufactured engineered timber at civic scale: “This is more than just a building — it is a platform to showcase the future of cost-competitive sustainable construction. At its heart will be TimberSpan, our locally manufactured mass timber system. It will form the strong, sustainable skeleton of the building and contribute to creating spaces that look beautiful, feel natural, and support workplace wellbeing.”
Wood Central understands that Wellington-based LT McGuinness — which completed New Zealand’s largest mass timber office building, the 10,400sqm 90 Devonport Road in Tauranga, as recently as March 2025 — has been appointed as principal contractor, selected over local firms specifically for its mass timber experience. Both parties have committed to local subcontractors across the remainder of the project, with Hawke’s Bay Cranes handling all lifting outside the range of the LT McGuinness-owned tower crane — the only such crane currently operating in the region.
TimberSpan — Tumu’s engineered structural timber brand, founded in 2009 and operating from a dedicated Hastings facility equipped with a Hundegger ROBOT-Drive precision joinery machine — will produce the LVL components forming the building’s primary structure, with all processing carried out in Hawke’s Bay. The completed building will feature exposed timber interiors, showers and lockers, secure bike storage, and 47 on-site car parks including EV charging stations.
“Our partnership with Tumu is a great example of local leadership driving progress,” a council spokesperson said. “We are getting an efficient, fit-for-purpose base for our team, and at the same time, supporting a local business that is bringing sustainable construction and modern commercial space into the heart of Hastings.”
