Housing fly-buys in residential 'aero park'

By Wayne Thompson

A proposal for a Florida-style "aero park" on the North Shore that would allow aviators to live beside the airfield and park their planes in their home garages may be only weeks away from starting.

The fringes of the airfield at Dairy Flat are marked for 77 homes on sites priced from $200,000 to $400,000, averaging 0.4ha in area, and linked by concrete taxiways to the runway.

The homes, lying between Wilks Rd and the new northern motorway extension, will also have street frontages for vehicle access.

The 50ha development is described as being on a far bigger and more sophisticated scale than the clustering of homes alongside the airfield at Pauanui, on the Coromandel Peninsula.

A director of Hopper Group, Jeffrey Hopper, says he hoped in a few weeks to be in a position to report the country's first Aero Park would happen, and offer a first stage of eight sections next February or March.

The project has approval from the field's owner, the North Shore Aero Club, and the Rodney District Council.

Technical planning matters raised by both the company and the Auckland Regional Council are nearing settlement.

Outstanding is a move by Rodney council to introduce restricted "noise contours" - to set different noise limits for certain parts of the airfield neighbourhood. The move has drawn 38 submissions in opposition, and these will be heard next month.

When Rodney council debated bringing the development within the "countryside living" zone in its proposed District Plan, it received 90 submissions opposing the project.

However, the council ruled that the development conformed to this zone, including its "green belt" provisions, and did not affect the long-term development of the airfield.

The regional council's objection reflected its concern that neighbourhood complaints of aircraft noise might threaten an airfield it regarded as important regional infrastructure.

Senior regional planner Geoff Winn says the regional council wants noise contours, based on New Zealand standards for airport noise management, before it can agree to settlement of planning consents.

Future subdivisions would be affected by contours, because those within them must have homes designed to limit noise reaching inside to a level of 40 dBA.

Dairy Flat and Ardmore are the only general aviation fields in the region, and they will reach their capacity in a decade, says Mr Winn.

Dairy Flat takes a quarter of the traffic, or 35,000 flight movements a year, and newly revised estimates put its capacity at 108,000.

This figure will be used to determine where noise contour boundaries should be placed.

"We have to accept there will be some housing inside the 65 dBA contour boundary," says Mr Winn.

"But, on the other hand, we will have quite a large noise contour footprint over the rural area, which will protect the long-term future of the airfield."

The developers argued that the aviation park residents within the 65 dBA noise area would not complain about noise, because they were aviation enthusiasts and members of the aero club.

They would provide a buffer of aviation-friendly residents around the airfield to ensure its protection.