Long-vacant Napier school site to be redeveloped for family homes

An image from the plans posted with the Napier City Council.

More than 2ha of prime Napier hills real estate vacant for 18 years and once targeted for a 61-unit residential development is now set to become the site of two family homes.

The site is the 2.2ha 46-50 Napier Tce former home of Hukarere Girls College, which has expansive views over the city of Napier and Marine Pde towards Cape Kidnappers.

Vacated by the school in 2003 amid a move to a property once a Department of Social Welfare boys' home near Eskdale, the historic buildings were demolished and the site bought by investors planning the residential development, which was to have been known as Hukarere Heights.

Strong opposition based on bids by specially-formed School Developments Limited to get exemptions from the Napier City Council's Napier Hill Character Zone requirements led to an independent commissioner declining an application for resource consent in 2009.

The former Hukarere girls school site on the Napier hills, vacant 18 years and now set for redevelopment as two family homes. Photo / Warren Buckland

Appeal plans were unsuccessful and the site was finally sold to its current owner after being advertised for sale in 2017, when real estate agents described it as an "exceptional bare-land holding in a very desirable area."

Agents had called for "developers or investors looking to secure a premium residential development opportunity" in the heart of the Napier hill residential area and "ready for transformation".

Napier City Council has confirmed a new application by Onekawa-based Dream Constructions Limited, based on the building of two family homes on the site, a short distance from Napier Central School, was approved on December 4.

The company is that of liquor stores owners Palwinder Singh and brother-in-law Avtar Singh, whose Big Barrel chain has grown from a single store opened in Napier's Marewa Village Shopping Centre in 2003 to about 43 stores.

They stretch from Te Awamutu in the north to Dunedin in the south and extend across the North Island from Hawke's Bay to New Plymouth.

Palwinder Singh confirmed to Hawke's Bay Today the site is being developed as two family homes and that he hopes work will start in the next few weeks.

Material provided with the consent application said affected neighbours had consented to the plans, which come at the same time as residential development of 3ha of the former Napier Hospital are shelved amid an $11.4 million purchase of that land for a new drinking-water reservoir.