Residents from the Tory heartland of Remuera were urged last night to seek something more sensible than the Government’s mandated intensification plan, with the proposal compared to “bad plastic surgery”.
About 150 people attended the meeting at the Remuera Club, hosted by Epsom MP and Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour, to discuss concerns about high-rise apartments in single-house neighbourhoods, the loss of “Special Character” areas of villas and bungalows, and infrastructure.
It followed a similar meeting hosted by Seymour at Parnell last Friday, and an earlier public meeting in Mt Eden, organised by the Character Coalition.
The call for a calm, considered approach came from Penny Tucker, a member of the Ōrākei Local Board and “high-functioning Nimby” who has spent weeks walking the streets looking for trade-offs that work for residents and the targets set by the latest plans.
“As a board, we are a long way from a state of acceptance,” she said.
Tucker said her 18-year-old daughter had looked at the proposed housing capacity figures and said they looked like bad plastic surgery – “unrealistic, over-inflated with unattractive fillers” and not worth the cost.
Tucker said her board chair, Scott Milne, described the plan as not just about growing the city, but growing a city where people can live and that can compete with cities in Australia and around the world.
“We have to have better infrastructure. Fix what is broken below the ground and do it right before we start building on top of it. It’s not rocket science.”
There were also concerns about the rushed process for the plans, an issue shared by Deputy Mayor Desley Simpson, an Ōrākei Ward councillor with close ties to the National Party.
Simpson, who was unable to attend the meeting, has raised concerns about how the public would have their say and the short timeline for the council to deliver a final plan.
There were concerns from the floor about the need for the latest plan when the 2016 Unitary Plan was handling growth and keeping the fabric of the city together; and the pepper-potting effect of potential high-rise apartments in between traditional housing.
Sue Cooper, of Remuera Heritage, wanted to know if Seymour could get the Government to reduce the proposed capacity for two million houses and give more time to review the modelling and mapping.
The answer was no. The law said the council must come up with a plan and if the law was not followed, the minister may intervene – and that remained a possibility, Seymour said.
The MP supports much of what RMA Minister Chris Bishop was doing to “restore common sense to housing policy”, particularly by removing the previous Government’s one-size-fits-all intensification rules.
Seymour, who is trying to prevail upon the council and Bishop to make changes to the city’s new draft plan, which was concentrated in central Auckland, said: “That was a big step forward.”
“Given the recent experiences with flood damage, a major sewer-related sinkhole and sewage leaking on the shoreline, our infrastructure is plainly not up to such intensification,” he said.
Last month, Auckland councillors agreed to begin a replacement plan allowing capacity for up to two million homes by accepting Bishop’s offer to opt out of the previous Government’s medium-density residential standards (MDRS) rules permitting three-storey homes everywhere. Opting out required the council to adopt new planning rules enabling equivalent housing capacity.
The council has emphasised that the two million figure is not a building target, and officials only projects demand for 241,000 new homes over the next 30 years. It said ensuring an ample land supply helped support housing affordability.
Infrastructure, the council said, would be rolled out gradually in line with growth. However, that’s not always happening now. For instance, Watercare plans to truck sewage from four new housing developments that lack permanent wastewater infrastructure.
At the Mt Eden meeting, council planner Celia Davison said the plan was “really significant” and would change the way Auckland looked over a very long time if the council went ahead with it this month.
Councillors are expected to vote on September 24 to abandon the MDRS and proceed to public consultation on the draft replacement plan.
Meanwhile, the Character Coalition, an alliance of around 60 heritage and community groups, has cited council data showing that 20,446 properties are currently designated in Special Character Areas.
Under Plan Change 78, addressing the MDRS, there are 16,090 and under the draft replacement plan, there are 15,357.
Most of the additional properties affected under the draft replacement plan are in the Albert-Eden ward, clustered around the Maungawhau (Mt Eden), Kingsland and Mt Albert railway stations – areas where Bishop has mandated 10- to 15-storey apartment buildings to leverage the City Rail Link.
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