Midtown is back in motion. Streets are reopening, footpaths are filling, the CRL opening is on the horizon, and the disruption of recent years is giving way to a renewed sense of confidence. What’s emerging is not simply a recovery, but one of the most significant commercial and civic transformations Auckland has seen in decades. But it will only be successful if people continue to come back to the precinct.
Building Confidence, One Safe Step at a Time
Revitalising the city centre takes more than transport links and refurbished buildings. For Midtown’s momentum to last, people must feel safe moving through the precinct – on public transport, on foot, and throughout their working day. While Midtown is visibly busier, perceptions around safety remain an important factor in how people choose where to work.
This is where private investment has a role to play. Alberts has taken an active, considered approach to safety as part of its commitment to the precinct’s long-term success. As its portfolio expands across multiple buildings and addresses, Alberts recognises that security must be smarter, more coordinated, and responsive to the realities of a busy urban environment. By prioritising safety, Alberts is giving employers greater confidence to bring their teams back into the CBD.
Safety is not just a building-level issue, but also a neighbourhood one. When the streets feel welcoming, businesses thrive. When businesses thrive, Midtown thrives.
How Alberts approaches Safety
Alberts treats safety as both an experience and an operational priority. Their buildings are designed to feel premium and welcoming, and that requires environments where issues are identified early and handled quietly. To support this, Alberts has partnered with AI security company Watchful, enabling the combination of dedicated on-site security with Watchful’s real-time monitoring outside business hours. This gives their teams visibility across areas that any large workplace benefits from monitoring proactively, including shared laneways, carparks, stairwells and back-of-house spaces.
The hybrid approach works because each element supports the other. The physical presence of Alberts’ security staff provides reassurance and the ability to respond quickly, while Watchful highlights only the situations that require attention. This allows guards to focus on purposeful tasks rather than low-value patrols or retrospective footage reviews. It results in a more efficient and targeted security operation meaning a safer environment for Alberts tenants and the surrounding area.
Alberts’ ongoing commitment to improving safety is also a defining feature. Their teams view security not only as risk management, but as a core part of the tenant experience that supports community, confidence, and the high standard of workplace amenity that Alberts is known for. Safety becomes an invisible amenity – felt by tenants, but rarely seen. It is embedded within the hospitality-driven experience that Alberts delivers. This mindset has made the hybrid model a natural fit across the Formery, Exchange, 1 Albert Street and the wider Midtown precinct.
How Watchful Works
Watchful strengthens Alberts’ security operation by analysing activity across the cameras they already have and surfacing only the events that matter. When motion is detected, Watchful performs real-time contextual threat analysis, assessing whether the behaviour aligns with what Alberts wants visibility on. This may include unauthorised attempts to interact with restricted areas, unusual lingering in less trafficked spaces, or activity around carpark and laneway entries that often signals the early stages of an issue. If something needs attention, an alert is sent to Alberts’ security team or their after-hours patrol partners so they can respond quickly.
Security does not stop at the building. Ensuring people’s right to privacy is also one of the reasons why Alberts chose Watchful as their partner. All analysis is based on context rather than identity – Watchful does not use facial recognition or collect biometric information. The full video is stored in Alberts’ own video management system, and only the minimal data needed for analysis is processed by Watchful. Human staff always make the final decision on what action to take.
Because the system monitors continuously and without fatigue, Alberts gains reliable awareness across parts of the portfolio that typically receive less real-time attention, including basements, service corridors, stairwells and shared precinct spaces. This results in clearer insight into what is happening across their sites and a safer, more predictable after-hours environment for tenants and staff.
And as more Midtown landlords adopt privacy-preserving monitoring, the effect compounds: visibility strengthens across neighbouring buildings and helps increase safety across the entire district – not just within individual assets.
Early Results and Sentiment
Alberts is already seeing clear improvements across their sites since adopting the hybrid model. Unwanted activity has reduced, with fewer situations requiring attention. Guards are responding more quickly because Watchful filters out noise and highlights only the events that matter. This has made the overall operation more proactive and less reactive, contributing to safer and more predictable after-hours conditions.
Tenants report feeling more confident moving through shared spaces, especially in carparks and entry points. Alberts’ facilities and security teams have gained stronger situational awareness and a clearer understanding of where patterns of behaviour may form before they escalate into recurring problems. Alberts Facilities Manager, James Meyer, commented on how they’ve managed to turn security from reactive to pre-emptive:
“Previously, security responses were largely reactive. Incidents such as vandalism and trespass were dealt with only once damage had already been done – requiring significant time, effort and cost to restore buildings to the standard we expect. Today, that model has fundamentally changed.”
He went on to say that when more potentially serious offences have been about to occur, Watchful’s AI monitoring enabled security and police to respond and secure the site within as little as 4 minutes.
For Alberts, this improved visibility has supported leasing conversations, giving prospective tenants greater confidence in the consistency of safety across Alberts buildings.
Although the deployment is still relatively early across the full portfolio, the combination of dedicated on-site security and Watchful monitoring is already reinforcing the sense of safety and care that defines the Alberts experience and is contributing to Midtown’s broader forward momentum as activity returns and investment increases.
In Closing
Alberts and Watchful share a belief that revitalising the precinct will be best achieved when landlords, businesses and technology partners collaborate with intent. By combining thoughtful workplace design, community-building, proactive safety and intelligent precinct-wide systems, Midtown can become an exemplar for how urban centres evolve after periods of disruption.