Gentrification changing character of suburb with hidden charm

By BERNARD ORSMAN

On the gentle slopes of Wai o Taiki Bay, Nic Lilburn goes "wow" every time he peers out from his deck across the Tamaki River to Half Moon Bay and the $1 million properties along Bucklands Beach. It's a seaview Aucklanders dream of, but few can afford.

Until a few years ago Nic Lilburn and his wife, Chrissy, were residents of Glen Innes, one of Auckland's poorest state housing suburbs, colloquially known as GI and Eastside.

Then someone came up with the idea of changing the name of the better-positioned coastal streets to escape the Glen Innes stigma. Wai o Taiki Bay was born.

Now some in the real estate industry consider Wai o Taiki Bay and Glen Innes will become the new Onehunga or Ponsonby and home to wealthy, young, two-income couples.

Mr Lilburn bought his 1956 state house on a quarter-acre section 13 years ago for $115,000. The property has since been subdivided in two and when the Weekend Herald visited he had just finished talking to a real estate agent who had phoned asking if he wanted to sell his house.

At the beginning of the year, the Lilburns turned down $270,000 for the three-bedroom house. Since then a new kitchen and bathroom have been added, plus landscaping, at a cost of $35,000.

Mr Lilburn works as a handyman. Chrissy Lilburn is a natural healer and works from home. The couple got sick of getting kicked out of rentals in the eastern suburbs and stumbled upon the house in Silverton Ave while driving home one day. They faced negative reactions from family about moving to Glen Innes. And sure enough, living alongside state tenants has not always been easy and they have been burgled three times.

"But it hasn't bothered us because the view, it's 'wow'," says Mr Lilburn.

The neighbourhood has also changed in the Lilburns' favour.

When the National Government sold state houses in the 1990s, many tenants bought their homes, and renovated and sold them to new, private buyers. A row of modern, Mediterranean-style houses has appeared down the hill.

One street away, in Clairville Cres, housing lobbyist Sue Henry is fighting the gentrification of Glen Innes. The red-haired, tattooed and feisty activist, , known for her high platform shoes and short skirts, is not your Ponsonby type.

She has known only one home - the 1950s solid, tiled state house she shares with her older partner Ken Underwood. A naval gunner in World War II, he was allocated the state house in 1956 under the 1948 Tuberculosis Act. The act, still on the statute books, provides for lifelong "special accommodation" for returned servicemen suffering from the infectious lung disease.

Henry is suspicious of politicians. She is convinced planners at Auckland City Council want to tear down the old state houses and replace them with "pig pens" built of leaky materials.

"I have no argument with more housing, but you don't go uprooting existing housing stocks in established areas like Glen Innes."

Down on the flat near the Glen Innes shopping centre, Housing New Zealand is planning a $27 million project to upgrade the Talbot Park housing precinct as a model for future developments across Auckland.

There are separate plans to redevelop the shopping centre and Glen Innes railway station.

Housing New Zealand is seeking a plan change to transform the drab 3.7ha Talbot Park site and increase the number of properties from 167 to 205. That will require more intense housing, but the state housing agency has no plans to put up any buildings higher than the existing three-storey Star Flats.

Intensification is at the heart of changes in Glen Innes. The Regional Growth Strategy predicts that Auckland City's population will grow from 380,000 to 475,000 by 2021 and 580,000 by 2050.

That's the equivalent of squeezing the population of Wellington and the Wairarapa into Auckland City over 50 years.

When the council tried two years ago to rezone Panmure's residential streets for high-density housing of up to six storeys, a public outcry forced the planners to retreat.

Lessons from Panmure helped shape a council proposal for new zoning rules to build denser housing in residential areas near town centres and public transport routes to achieve "quality urban design".

Housing New Zealand chief executive Michael Lennon says the different types of people requiring housing assistance will drive the Talbot Park development, not the council's desire for denser housing.

Mr Lennon says the Government is committed to increasing the stock of state houses - Housing New Zealand has added more than 3500 dwellings in three years - but he will not rule out selling or rationalising houses other than Talbot Park in Glen Innes. Plans for the rest of Glen Innes "have not been prepared", he says.

A report on the proposed eastern highway prepared for the council says there is a view in the real estate industry that Housing New Zealand may rationalise some of its Glen Innes properties.

There could be more developments like that at Madeleine Ave, since renamed Mt Taylor Drive, where Housing New Zealand sold expensive real estate just inside Glendowie to finance intensive housing lower down the slopes in Glen Innes.

Real estate agent Bryce Hawkins, who is marketing 13 townhouses in a development called Stirling Green, on Mt Taylor Drive, for between $450,000 and $500,000, says the area must continue to lift.

Mr Hawkins, in blue chinos, boat shoes and open-neck white shirt, is typical of the market he aims to attract. He sells Mt Taylor Drive to a mix of Asians, South Africans, traditional Kiwis and young couples who want their children to go to sought-after Glendowie primary and secondary schools.

"If Housing New Zealand was brave enough to repeat the exercise I could see something like Mt Taylor Drive happening down in Glen Innes," he says.

But Mr Hawkins says the executive-style homes, cafes and restaurants formula is more likely to work on the vacant Mt Wellington quarry alongside Auckland University's $30 million Tamaki campus expansion, which is cut off from Glen Innes by the railway line and the planned eastern highway.

LandCo, the private owner of the quarry, has plans for a $500 million high-density housing development.



Nevertheless, Mr Hawkins says Fernwood Place, Silverton Ave, Lyndhurst St, Inglewood St and even Henry's Clairville Cres, just inside Wai o Taiki Bay from Glendowie, are addresses to watch.

"Over my dead body," Sue Henry says of any bid to snatch the patch for private housing. "I love it more than anything."

Further reading
nzherald.co.nz/property