The Mitre 10 MEGA store being built in Three Parks is arguably Wanaka’s largest retail building, at 9000m2. On a 2.8ha site with more than 200 car parks still to be laid out, it dwarfs the large New World supermarket opposite.

While its sheer size is impressive, so is its use of innovative building materials and its ambition to operate off-the-grid six months of the year. 

Co-owner Martin Dippie described the “future-proofed” building, with its resilient technology incorporated in the design and roof-top solar farm, to the Wanaka App.

The building’s mezzanine floor structure, trade offices, staff facilities and cafe will use 700m2 of cross laminated timber. CLT is an innovative construction method involving a minimum of three layers of timber, glue laminated at 90 degrees to each other, creating a lightweight but solid timber product.

A hiab truck cranes the mezzanine floor into place. The mezzanine will house administration, staff and training rooms, IT and servers. PHOTO: Supplied

Mass timber walls have strong seismic strength, high fire and insulation properties, and a low carbon footprint, Martin said.

“This gives the wall extra strength as the timbers naturally provide cross bracing,” he said. The post tensioned concrete slabs would also provide additional strength and flexibility in a large seismic event.

The 6000m2 retail area features Kingspan lightweight insulated panel technology to help improve the building’s thermal performance, and passive stack effect air ventilation via electronically controlled opening windows in the central raised roof. Kingspan’s insulated panels use a unique high performance PIR (polyisocyanurate) rigid thermal core which is especially fire resistant.

The finished building will also have a roof mounted 100KW solar power array that will allow it to be operated off the grid for six months of the year.

A roof-top 100KW solar power farm will help the building operate off-the-grid for months. PHOTO: Supplied.

“It will power the electric heating and cooling systems which are assisted in the summer by pre-cooling the incoming air via water cooling towers,” Martin said. “The system will also provide electricity for two free EV car chargers for customers.”

“We have future proofed ourselves by making sure the facility can handle at least 20 years' growth,” he said.

The current Mitre 10 store at Anderson Heights has served the community well but the new store, which is almost double the size, will supply a significantly wider range of home and garden improvement and DIY products.

It features a 4000m2 full-service garden centre which includes a cafe, as well as a paint innovation centre, a kitchen and bathroom design hub, a specialist power and hand-tool area, and a covered drive-through timber and building materials yard.

Mitre 10 staff have been involved in the design concept and will be employed at the new store together with at least another 20 new employees, Martin said.

“The team is very excited about getting a state of the art new facility to work in,” he said.

Starting from scratch with a greenfields site, the complex project has been 10 years in the planning, he said.

It was originally scheduled to open in spring 2020, but construction has been delayed a little by COVID-19 restrictions. 

Martin said Calder Stewart and its local sub-contractors managed the lockdown period well but there was a lengthy delay waiting for the CLT to arrive from Europe. The mezzanine’s CLT wall panels needed to be craned in from above which delayed the roof from going on.

Mitre 10 MEGA is still scheduled to open this year (the date yet to be confirmed) and there will be a smooth transition from the old to the new to ensure negligible disruption to their local customer base, Martin said.