New Zealand’s top property developers: The 12 men shaping Auckland and beyond

Winton Land’s Chris Meehan has won fast-track approval for the 4000-home new Sunfield housing estate at Ardmore and created New Zealand’s most upmarket new hospitality venues, Ayrburn and Cracker Bay.

Mark Thomson of Auckland Airport brought us the new $200m Mānawa Bay retail hub, and the airport terminals are now undergoing their largest expansion.

This group of 12 mainly head up NZX-listed businesses with long track records of achievements.

They control billions of dollars of land and buildings.

Hollywood hates developers, usually casting them as the bad guys in films.

Yet these 12 make our lives better by creating new homes, which we need and green star-rated buildings with state-of-the-art facilities, which encourage people to work together.

If agents have any of these names on the end of a deal, they regard these signatures as ones they can rely on.

What’s it like if you gather many of the 12 in one room to photograph them? Do they compete with each other, joke, or tease each other?

Sure. They know each other as well.

They meet at local and overseas events and conferences because, as they point out, they are a relatively small, tight-knit band.

And they have history.

For example, Goodman New Zealand CEO James Spence says Argosy Property CEO Peter Mence lectured him at university.

Dominion’s Brett Russell tells how he meets many at social events, and he cites the polo as one example.

Russell was photographed three hours after announcing a $250m deal to sell Rydges Wellington and Sofitel Queenstown to Brookfield Asset Management.

They express admiration for Winton Land’s Chris Meehan and his vision of opening the southern hospitality precinct Ayrburn outside Arrowtown – a gathering point for many of them already.

In January, the Herald reported how Kiwi Property had struck a deal to sell ASB’s North Wharf building on Jellicoe St to Precinct for $205m.

So they do deals with each other.

Asked if any of them race cars, one jokes that they do - but not on race tracks.

Some of their children were or are at school together, and many are friends.

The 12-man photo is a compilation of four separate shoots by Dean Purcell because they could not all visit at the same time.

At the March 4 initial photo shoot were Simplicity Living’s Shane Brealey and Fletcher Living’s Steve Evans: they are developing opposite sides of what was Ellerslie Racecourse.

Brealey is joking about the best haircuts and teasing the room about comparing his to Pritchard’s.

It could be a haircut competition, but not always one on the real estate scene.

Evans: “What Shane [Brealey] is looking for is not what I am looking for. We complement each other. What Simplicity does is different from what Mark Francis does and what Chris Meehan is doing.”

Brealey has a sense of foreboding about the photo because he recalls how, in the late 1990s, Metro magazine photographed a group of developers who then suffered financial hardship.

Stride Property CEO Philip Littlewood conceived the idea of the photo, suggesting it some years ago. He had no particular magazine or story in mind but thought it would be an interesting concept to see as many as possible together.

Property For Industry CEO Simon Woodhams describes the 12 as an impressive group of people: “Everyone gets on very well.”

Pritchard on the 12 featured here as CEOs being men: “This shows how poorly our sector has dealt with diversity.”

Yet in the same breath, he notes how the Precinct chairwoman is Anne Urwin, appointed in early 2023.

So, this photo might not really show all the power behind the throne.

North Shore resident Pritchard has long served in this role, appointed in 2010.

“I grew up on the Hibiscus Coast. My dad was a builder and my mum worked in a supermarket. So I consider I had a humble but very fortunate upbringing,” he told BusinessDesk in 2021.

He has worked in Auckland all his life, and wants to make it one of the best waterfront cities in the world.

He trained as a teacher initially and then worked as a fireman at Auckland Airport. He went to Massey University and did a master’s degree in management, and the airport initially offered him a role in property.

He is planning New Zealand’s boldest new property project: the multi-billion-dollar twin-tower Te Pūmanawa o Tāmaki on the site of the Downtown Carpark, a block from the waterfront.

Precinct built the $1b+ Commercial Bay with its PwC Tower, laneways and dining hubs, as well as Beca’s new $300m offices.

The company owns two blocks of waterfront land where 10,000 people work: the highest population concentration in one area in Aotearoa.

It is also building more than 1000 new student rental apartments and new private residences, all in Auckland.

Brealey, with KiwiSaver chief Sam Stubbs, is leading the largest build-to-rent development drive in New Zealand via Simplicity Living.

This Waiheke Island resident is an engineer who headed Brookfield Multiplex in New Zealand, then famously quit in a Jerry Maguire moment.

He founded prominent local builder NZ Strong, sold that to Chris Hunter and then founded NZ Living to build apartments.

He and Stubbs formed Simplicity Living to build fit-for-purpose rental apartments in Auckland and eventually Queenstown.

Brealey is married to Anna. They travel extensively and he has a boat which carries his nickname.

Woodhams has been in this multibillion-dollar business for nearly 13 years and was appointed CEO in 2019.

He was previously the general manager of Direct Property Fund before PFI’s merger with DPF in 2013.

Before that, he worked at McDougall Reidy & Co as development manager.

He has a Bachelor of Commerce majoring in accounting and marketing from Canterbury University.

Australian-born Evans is building new homes on several sites, including a $500m project The Hill at Ellerslie and a new housing estate in the ex-Winstone Quarry at Three Kings.

He started with Fletcher in 2013 as the chief operating officer for housing in the construction division and was appointed to his current role in 2015.

He was a board member of Auckland Council’s Eke Panuku, on the Callaghan Innovation board, a director of the Saint Kentigern Trust Board, and was deputy chair of the Urban Development Institute of New Zealand.

The youngest in this group of 12, James Spence, is just 42.

He was only appointed CEO in 2023, making him the newest in his role out of the 12 men.

He joined Goodman in 2006.

He is highly regarded because, although he is relatively young, he became chief executive with more than 20 years of corporate, property and funds management experience in Europe and New Zealand.

Spence took over from John Dakin and has a low-profile media approach.

Littlewood joined Stride in 2014, having spent six years in Britain, where he worked with Morgan Stanley’s real estate merchant banking division.

He has more than 20 years of experience in property investment management.

Stride owns Westgate’s NorthWest shopping centre, Wellington’s Deloitte building and its Queensgate mall.

Associated business Investore is a specialist in the retail area. It owns many supermarkets as well as Tauranga’s Bay Central mall.

Thomson has more than 30 years of experience in real estate management and development.

He is responsible for all commercial business activities at the airport, including retail, which encompasses duty-free, specialty retail, shopping centres and e-commerce.

He runs a $3.9b portfolio of property at the Auckland Airport which includes the new $200m Mānawa Bay mall as well as the transport business for car parking and valet.

He is also in charge of the airport joint venture with Tainui.

The airport expansion is not just via the development of the new international and national terminals. It also includes a vast new business park called The Landing.

Some of New Zealand’s biggest businesses have relocated there, including Foodstuffs (North Island), and Ikea has its logistics centre there.

Qualified engineer Peter Mence runs Argosy, the diversified business with thousands of shareholders and a $2.16b portfolio, with investments in the office, retail and industrial sectors.

Mence has worked for 40 years in the property industry, including at Progressive Enterprises, Challenge Properties, Richard Ellis and Green and McCahill.

He joined Armstrong Jones (NZ) in 1994 and was appointed general manager of Argosy, then at ING Property Trust in 2007.

In 2009, he became CEO of Argosy.

In 2021, he won the Property Council’s highest honour, its members’ laureate award.

Mark Francis is the son of Peter Francis, a noted multimillionaire of the 1980’s Chase Corporation and former chief of Force Corp.

He has credited his father with instilling a passion for real estate in him, though he has noted his business success was not directly backed by family money.

Francis is married to Dominique, and the two often feature in society pages, leading the life people often associate with property development executives.

In 2001, he formed Augusta Group, which specialised in property syndication.

He heads the NZX-listed Asset Plus and is CEO of Centuria NZ.

Last year, plans for New Zealand’s first surf park won a fast-track referral. Francis is a director of A.W. Holdings 2021, a joint venture between international surf park developer Aventuur and New Zealand project partners, including Sir John Kirwan.

Additionally, Francis and fellow car enthusiast Zlatko Filipchich last year opened New Zealand’s first members-only, premium car storage facility at Penrose.

Brett Russell is carrying on the legacy of his father, Alf, who started the business.

It all began with Stresscrete last century, then the family business expanded to scaffolding and formwork business Acrow, block and brick laying, and then commercial and civil business Dominion Constructors.

Dominion has been a dominant force and a family-owned entity for many years.

The Russell Group of Companies owns Dominion, Acrow and Stresscrete.

That group is in with the NZ Super Fund and Lockwood Property, first accumulating and then wanting to sell a $600m seven-property hotel portfolio it had amassed last decade.

In November, Russell joined others for a groundbreaking at the new 307ha multibillion-dollar town centre at Beachlands, southeast Auckland.

Russell and Rob Bassett of Bassett Plumbing win races in their boat, Wired, described as a “proven weapon on both inshore and offshore circuits”.

Brett Russell is Russell’s managing director. His sister Kerin Russell-Smith is an accountant and a director of the business.

The Southland-born businessman affectionately named his company Winton after the small town he was adopted from: “Parents adopted me from Winton. When my parents picked me up, I was in Winton,” he said in 2021.

Meehan’s wife is Olympian sailor Michaela Meehan, who is Danish and competed at the Atlanta, Sydney and Athens Olympics.

They are friends with Danish royalty and divide their time between Queenstown and Auckland.

Chris Meehan worked for many years in Australia, where he founded Belle Property, one of that country’s leading real estate franchises.

Meehan shot to public prominence here in 2021 when he listed part of Winton Land on the NZX and ASX.

That business is building new housing and retirement villages as well as hospitality precincts Ayrburn near Arrowtown and Bravo at Cracker Bay in Auckland’s Wynyard Quarter.

Zimbabwe-born Clive Mackenzie spent all his working life from the age of 26 living in New Zealand, apart from a seven-year stint in the United States where he worked for retail giant Westfield.

The son of an engineer who specialised in working in the mining industry, Mackenzie has a BCom and post-grad in management from the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa.

He moved to New Zealand in his mid-20s “just wanting to explore the world and this is as far as I got”.

He initially worked for mall owner St Lukes Group with Paul Preston and David Kennedy, starting at Manukau as an assistant centre manager.

He then moved to Hamilton’s Chartwell and Christchurch’s giant Riccarton mall, all centres which Westfield bought.

Mackenzie was appointed Kiwi CEO in 2018.

Kiwi owns Shortland St’s Vero centre, New Zealand’s biggest shopping centre at Sylvia Park in Mt Wellington and last year struck a deal with Costco to build New Zealand’s second store at Drury.

At Drury, a new town centre for about 60,000 people is being built.

Anne Gibson has been the Herald’s property editor for 26 years, written books and covered property extensively here and overseas.