Is distressed central Auckland entertainment hub Sky World a dangerous building? The victim of a late-night sexual assault who is fighting for security improvements says yes.

This feature was made with the support of the Auckland Radio Trust, sponsors of the Vince Geddes In-Depth Journalism Fund.

Warning: This story includes an account of a sexual assault. 

It was late on a Thursday night when Florence* first saw the man: he was whizzing past her floor. She’d just sent her staff home, hit send on her last emails and locked the doors when she saw Sky World’s rocket ship-shaped lift carrying him to the floor above her. The bright orange elevator has been a place of joy for many. Soon it would mean something very different to her.

The Sky World building is labyrinthine. It was once a bustling hub of Auckland’s Queen Street, but has famously fallen into disarray, with businesses boarded up and sections sealed off. Usually, after her shift, Florence would leave via the stairs or the ordinary elevator, but that October 2025 night “on a whim”, she decided to run across a bridge and push the button for the rocket ship lift. When it arrived, Florence was surprised to see the same man she’d spotted earlier still inside. 

This wasn’t her first encounter with men behaving unusually at Sky World. She had dealt with break-ins and strangers confronting her during shifts, and she had frequently called security for help.

The man in the lift wore black pants and a jacket and she decided he “looked like a normal guy”, so she stepped in, passing a sign about the lift’s CCTV cameras, and pushed the down button. 

At that time of night, Sky World falls into a lonely silence. The front doors are open but the air feels musty and still. The lights are dim. No music plays. Often the only noise is the whoosh of the rocket lift, which made headlines when it was installed in 1999 and became one of the building’s most popular attractions.

Florence was thinking about what she’d eat when she got home and looking forward to catching up with her flatmates when the man stepped forward and stopped the lift’s doors from closing. “I was suddenly in this very small space alone with a guy taller than me,” she remembers. She looked through the lift’s see-through glass panels and saw emptiness: there was no one to call to for help. “I was frozen in shock and fear,” she says, and then “it happened so fast”. 

A police report she filed the following day details what happened next. Just as the lift doors were about to close, the man pushed a button to stop the lift from moving, the report says. “He then harshly slapped me on the butt then moved his hand inward.” The report goes on to detail a sexual assault. 

When it was over, the man calmly strolled out of the lift. The doors shut and the lift took Florence to level two. She stepped out, paced back and forth and then leaned against a railing for support as the shock hit her. “I felt terrified, not knowing what to do,” she remembers. 

Then she spotted him. He was walking towards the doors leading out of the building onto Aotea Square. “He looked so chill,” she says. She called Sky World’s security and soon a guard was searching for the man, but it was too late – he was gone.

Florence called her manager, told them what had happened, then headed to the carpark beneath the building, got in her car and drove home. She lay in bed, stared at the ceiling and replayed the assault over in her mind. “I was in so much shock.” She kept thinking about what she could have done differently. “I… felt stupid that I didn’t do anything in the moment,” she says. “I had time and I could have caught him because I was there and watched him leave the building.” 

The next day, her partner insisted she file a police report. Florence wanted to include security camera footage and she figured that would be straight forward. The signs in the lift and elsewhere in the building were unmissable. In bold yellow and red lettering they warn: “You are being monitored by CCTV cameras… 24 hour surveillance.” Look up in the rocket ship lift and a camera appears to be capturing every move.

So Florence, who is employed by a business that rents space inside Sky World, approached the company that runs the building, JNJ Management, and requested the footage. She says she was told that while there were some working cameras in Sky World, the camera in the lift, as well as several others in the building, weren’t actually working cameras. That, Florence says, is when she got angry. “I lost all feeling of whatever safety I had in the building,” she says. “I was so mad, so upset.”

***

Even before the assault, Florence didn’t feel safe inside Sky World, where she works in a customer-facing role (we’re not naming the company she works for to protect Florence’s identity). She says stock would go missing and men would hang around. Once, while working alone, Florence watched a man crawl on his hands and knees through the front door of her workplace. He did this, she assumes, to avoid the gaze of security cameras. When he saw Florence calling her manager for help, the man crawled back out the doors, then stood up and walked back in. He stood over her and barked, “Do we have a problem?”

The root of the issue, Florence says, is the state of Sky World. Its abandoned shops and eateries mean there are often few people around (although a showing of The Odyssey recently at the Imax cinema in the complex has brought in more people) and many dark sections that feel scary to enter or pass. The maze-like layout means it’s hard to track anyone making a getaway. “If they go down the spiral staircase, you don’t know what level they’re getting off.”

Over the years, The Spinoff has covered Sky World’s erosion and decay extensively, from the bustling food court that disappeared around 2020, to the level two restaurants that have mostly departed. By 2023, the front doors smelled of urine and oil was visibly dripping from elevators.

Only a handful of businesses now remain operational inside the building, including the bowling alley Metro Lanes, the sensory Odyssey maze, an indoor golf course, a fried chicken joint, the bakery Bake My Day and a 12-screen Event Cinemas complex that includes the country’s largest Imax screen. Owner James Kwak has always declined to speak about the state of the building. 

The building’s original architect, Ashley Allen, is horrified. “Some of the lights have been out for nearly 10 years,” he says. “If he [Kwak] wanted to do everything possible to make an entertainment centre a bad building, he’s almost done it. He hasn’t innovated, he hasn’t updated it, he hasn’t got the lights and the razzmatazz, he hasn’t got the right tenants [or] the right mix.” Allen sighed. “It’s a collision of terrible, terrible mistakes.”

There have been numerous promises of revitalisations over the years. Three months ago, Sky World unveiled “new” renovation plans that it turned out were actually originally conceived and unveiled in 2022. Those plans rename Sky World to OnQ and include room for a ground floor market with 33 stalls to entice the estimated 54,000 extra people who will enter the area each day when the City Rail Link opens this month. In May, building manager Lydia Leiataua said Sky World’s renovations were due to be complete by Christmas. In her latest statement, she says early 2027.

Since 2011, Sky World’s building warrant of fitness (BWOF) submission has been filed late nine out of 15 times. The BWOF shows safety features “have been inspected, maintained and have performed as they should for the previous 12-month period”. Last October, Auckland Council issued a notice to fix for Sky World, due to “remedial works continuing on passive fire elements and signage”. It was remedied on April 22, eight months after the BWOF was due. 

But a BWOF does not cover security measures like guards and cameras. Auckland Council’s general manager building consents, Ian McCormick, says other than a bylaw about abandoned buildings, no law dictates how much security a building that’s open to the public needs to have. General safety and security within the building is the owner’s responsibility. That has caused real issues for Florence.

***

It has been 10 months since the assault. Florence remains locked in a battle with JNJ Management over the building’s security. After the assault, she asked JNJ to upgrade the building’s cameras and increase the presence of security guards, especially late at night. In May, she was told her latest request had been denied. She says she was told it would be too expensive to put a working camera in the rocket lift and as the lift had transparent sides it was less dangerous than other areas. 

The lack of new security measures have left Florence distressed and worried that what happened to her could happen to someone else, maybe someone younger, perhaps from her own team. “I’d feel awful,” she says.

Florence’s alleged attacker entered the building through one set of doors, used the rocket ship lift, walked down a staircase and out a different set of doors. No images of the attack were captured, but JNJ supplied a single image of the man from one of the building’s real, working security cameras. The grainy shot shows a man with mousey brown hair, wearing black jeans, a black jacket, black-and-red shoes and holding a phone in his left hand.

Police have made “numerous enquiries” but there’s been no arrest. Detective senior sergeant Martin Friends says police have been unable to identify Florence’s attacker. “Our enquiries to date have explored all available forensic opportunities and reviewing all available CCTV footage in the area,” he says. 

Asked if one image was sufficient to help in finding the man, police say: “The investigations team believe the image supplied is enough, in the sense that the person would be easily identifiable to someone who knows them.” Asked if footage from a working camera in the lift would help with a prosecution, police say: “We believe we have sufficient footage; we just need to know who the offender is.”

But one image is not good enough for Florence. She believes there should be functioning cameras capturing everyone entering Sky World and using the centre’s lifts. She also believes in a building in Sky World’s state, there should be more security guards. She’s come to think of the man who assaulted her as an “opportunist”. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he just assumed that [the cameras] weren’t working because half of the building looks like it’s turned to shit,” she says. She, herself, has no idea what cameras are and aren’t working, she says. “At this point, I just assume that none are for my own safety.”

Sky World says its security is fit for purpose. “Please be assured that the safety, security, and well-being of our patrons, tenants, and staff remain Sky World’s absolute priority,” Leiataua says. “We take this incident seriously, which reflects our ongoing commitment to maintaining a safe and well-managed environment through proactive security measures and close collaboration with the relevant authorities.”

The Spinoff sent Leiataua detailed questions about the number of working cameras at Sky World, how many security guards patrol the building, and what time at night the doors automatically close to the public. We also asked whether any changes had been made at Sky World following the assault on Florence. Leiataua responded: “We cannot comment on specific personnel matters.”

Florence is struggling with her recovery. She has taken time off work due to stress and attended counselling, but the trauma remains. Ahead of each shift, she gets jitters, knowing she will have to go back to Sky World. It’s a good job and one she needs, so in she goes. 

Once she’s there, Florence is always looking over her shoulder. “I’m hyper-aware of everyone I interact with,” she says. “It’s ruined my experience of serving good people. I have to assume everyone is bad.” It’s turned her into someone she doesn’t recognise and isn’t sure she likes. 

The company she works for has instigated a buddy system to keep staff safe at the end of their shifts, but Florence feels bad making staff stay late just for her. “It shouldn’t be up to us to be our own security guards,” she says. 

The rocket ship lift is still a delight to many visitors to the building. During her shifts, Florence can hear people taking joy rides up and down.

 * Name  has been changed to protect identity.

Helplines

Safe To Talk – 0800 044 334 or text 4334. Sexual harm helpline. 24/7

National Rape & Sexual Abuse Crisis Line – 0800 883 300. Support after rape or sexual assault. 24/7

24/7 HELPline – 0800 623 1700 or txt 8236. Support for sexual abuse survivors. 24/7