Dark side of high-rise life

New apartments sprouting on business-zoned land are a nightmare for owners of neighbouring flats, as GEOFF CUMMING reports.


The owners and tenants of two Newton flats know all about a blackout - and it makes them see red, not rugby.

Their long-established flats in the Ascot block have been darkened and dampened by a block of units built a metre from their windows.

The units have not only robbed the Ascot tenants of sunlight and privacy, the owners fear their income has gone out the window as high-density living is taken to an extreme.

Four months after part-owner Sandra Eriksen complained to the Auckland City Council, city planners have ruled out stopping the neighbouring development - even though the developers breached their resource consent.

The developers, Castlerock, had council permission to build office units on the business-zoned property at 122 Newton Rd. What they have built are apartments.

This makes them liable for higher fees, which the council - the former owner of the land - is now moving to collect. It has served an abatement notice on Castlerock, preventing it selling the units as residential premises until it pays its dues.

But a report presented yesterday by council planner David Frith says the units comply with building controls on height and location.

If the proposal had been on residential land, neighbours who were adversely affected could have objected and "height in relation to boundary" rules would have applied. But the hundreds of residential apartments now being built on business-zoned land in the inner-city are under no such constraints.

Mr Frith says the zoning means the developer can also apply for a "change of use of an existing building," to legitimise residential use of the site.

Castlerock has done just that, seeking resource consent for residential use as it puts the finishing touches to the units.

But Sandra Eriksen says that under the Resource Management Act, the council could have halted the units' construction months ago, when she alerted staff that the developer was in breach of his consent.

"They sat on it for 21/2 months until it reached a point where they could not legally stop it," she said.

The landlord of another affected flat, Ani Tollemache, says tenants are complaining about the damp and threatening to move out unless their rent is reduced.

"They can literally touch the next-door units from their bedroom window - their kitchen and bathroom have lost all their light.

"The planning department at Auckland City Council have lost the plot. They bent over backwards to get people back into the centre of Auckland but they have no planning controls to protect people's rights."

The city environments manager, Geoff Mears, says the council is powerless to act because the units' construction complies with the resource consent.

Contacted on a Hawaiian holiday yesterday, Castlerock director Rod Nielson said the development was "just a clean-cut property deal."

"The neighbours had the opportunity last October when we started marketing them and we showed where they were going to be. [Mrs Eriksen] has no rights to object."