The decision by US retail giant Costco to open its first New Zealand store in Auckland’s Westgate Town Centre is yet another coup for Mark Gunton, the owner of the NZ Retail Property Group.
With a property portfolio valued at $575 million in 2017, and declaring itself to be “proudly New Zealand-owned and operated,” NZRPG manages Westgate, Tauranga’s Fraser Cove complex and the Milford Centre on Auckland’s North Shore.
Having started out in the residential market, Gunton’s first big investment was a commercial building in New Lynn, which was bought for $600,000 in a mortgagee sale. His involvement in Westgate dates back to the late 1990s when he began to redevelop a shopping centre that has gradually evolved into a $1 billion mix of public and private development.
Current projects include a controversial plan to build a $200m apartment complex beside the Milford Shopping Centre, which was reconfigured after strong opposition from the local community. Future plans include the potential construction of up to 2000 apartments around Westgate.
Despite being the sole director of NZRPG, which at one stage considered going public, Gunton is no one-man band. Led by general manager Campbell Barbour, a management team spent several years convincing Costco to carve 3.3ha from Westgate’s 28ha “ready to build” land bank – enough space to build a $90m warehouse covering 1.4ha and provide more than 800 car parks.
Raised in Auckland and initially educated at Saint Kentigern Boys’ School and College, Gunton later attended the Flock House agricultural school at Bulls and then completed what he has described as a “life-changing” agricultural commerce degree at Lincoln University.
That farming knowledge has been put to good use at Gunton’s chosen home on the 15,300ha Argyle Station in northern Southland – the bulk of which was bought for $9.5m in 2002 and is now valued at $32m.
Managed by Gunton’s son, Jeremy and his wife Sally, the property has undergone a radical transformation including more than 20km of fencing to contain a herd of around 3500 deer. There are also 18,000 sheep, 1500 Angus cattle and a safari hunting park.
Also based at Argyle Station, Gunton’s other son, Andrew, operates High Country Helicopters, which offers commercial, agricultural and tourism services, and comes in handy when the owners need to round up deer poachers.
A keen trophy hunter, Gunton senior was the target of considerable public anger in 2013 when photos were published of him posing over the bodies of an elephant and a crocodile shot on an African hunting trip.
In a subsequent interview, the 63-year-old was quoted as saying that hunting in Africa was “not black and white” because the $100,000 he’d paid to shoot a bull elephant had fed 250 people. “I hunt. It’s no different to me raising cattle and selling them at the meatworks,” he reportedly said.
In 2017, he also dished out the following advice in an NZ Herald profile: “Never rely on the charity of your kids. Plan for the day you die [from] the day you earn your first dollar.”
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