How planning rules fail to preserve our heritage

By CHRIS BARTON

The destruction is carefully done - from the inside out and largely concealed by the builder's perimeter screens. The unusual three-gable, twin-valley roof of the old villa has been demolished, as has the one-and-a-half storey annex at the rear - replaced with a higher square hip roof which will house an upstairs master bedroom.

The old timber floors are gone, too - replaced with a concrete slab base. The original weatherboard walls, front verandah, entrance and side bay window have also been butchered - to be replaced by a new verandah encircling three sides of the house and walls punctuated by French doors all the way around.

All that remains of the 1886 house inhabited by the first Mayor of Devonport, Malcolm Niccol, are two forlorn bay windows propped up on the boundary. Where once stood a Victorian villa steeped in local memory, there's now a new roof and framing for a mock colonial house. History at once destroyed and replaced.

As North Shore City Councillor and Devonport Community Board member Andrew Eaglen points out, it's not really what heritage conservation is about: "Looking at a Disneyland of replica old houses is simply not the same as having genuinely old houses."

The destruction of historic homes is not just happening in Devonport. Earlier this year in Herne Bay locals were appalled to learn that two turn-of-the-century villas in Galatea Tce apparently protected under a "character zone" were not protected from removal by developers. Angry residents formed the Herne Bay Peninsula Group to lobby for change.

"It makes us really angry this situation has been allowed to happen so often," says Galatea Tce resident Ingrid Galloway. "These are restored villas but they're not big enough and grand enough for the new owners. This is what's happening in Herne Bay - they're pulling down the villas and we're losing the character of the area."

A similar outcry happened in Parnell when residents found they were powerless to stop the demolition of an Edwardian home at 42 St Stephen's Ave. That prompted the Auckland City Council to set aside $100,000 for a heritage inventory to help to identify significant buildings and sites that are being missed.

There have been calls, too, for the establishment of a Parnell Historic Society and the need for a more politically active "Save our Suburbs" organisation. Action Hobson, a political group contesting Auckland City Council and community board seats in the Hobson ward, has made "stopping the destruction of Auckland's heritage buildings", particularly in Parnell, a key plank of its campaign.

"Our concern is that uncontrolled development is leading to the demolition of historic homes and buildings, which is destroying the character of Parnell. Future generations will have no link back to their heritage and will shake their heads in wonder that our generation could have been so short-sighted in destroying the genesis of Auckland," says candidate Richard Simpson.

In Devonport outrage over the "alterations" at 2 Buchanan St by the owners - knitwear designer Caroline Sills and her husband Lloyd - came thick and fast.

"It is a deliberate flouting of the planning purpose of having a heritage zone," says Devonport Community Board member Joel Cayford. He also chairs North Shore City's works and environment committee.

"To knock down an original heritage house and put up a pastiche, a mix of styles, is just horrendous," says Margot McRae of the Devonport Heritage society.

The examples demonstrate significant shortcomings in local body heritage protection laws - begging the question of just how much heritage architecture is valued. In Auckland old houses are subject to strict rules regarding alteration, but are not protected from demolition. On the North Shore old homes are protected from demolition but not from being altered so much that they end up being demolished anyway.

"People will always tell you they value heritage," says conservation architect Jeremy Salmond. "But when it's a problem for them then they find reasons why it's not practicable to preserve."

Salmond says even with the best intentions, guidelines, incentives and district plan provisions, you can't make people value heritage if they don't want to. With enough money and persistence, people can always find a way around the rules.

Heritage protection comes under the aegis of the Resource Management Act and is left to district, city and regional councils to implement through their district and regional plans. Councils employ two schemes for preserving heritage architecture: designating a particular area a conservation or character zone which has special design rules and restrictions applied to the buildings there; and keeping a register which "schedules" historic buildings throughout the territory. The latter is in tandem with the Historic Places Trust which keeps a register under the auspices of the Historic Places Act - providing for preservation on a national basis and serving as third party backup to council efforts.

Maximum protection of a building in Auckland, for example, is achieved through a "Category A" rating on the council's register and "Category 1" on the Trust register. The process is reasonably effective for protecting landmark buildings, but not always, as evidenced by the omission of the Paykel house in Parnell.

Auckland City heritage manager George Farrant says such omissions are now being addressed - largely with the help of the public providing background history for buildings which the heritage division then investigates further.

But while individual buildings may get protection, it's the broader protection of heritage areas that is controversial. The council has allocated $180,000 to review its district plan and the anomaly that allows demolition of buildings in character zones such as Galatea Tce, but any change is at least a year away. He says the council is still unsure how far people want to go with heritage zoning - whether they want fully locked down "conservation areas" like Ponsonby's Renall St, Wanganui Ave, and Ardmore Rd. Or more "flexibility" as in the Residential 1 and 2b zones where alterations and additions are controlled, but demolition is allowed.

He's comfortable with new buildings invading character zones as long as the new works well with the old. " That was the intention of the zone - that we want to protect the character, not every stick of wood in the street. Part of the cost of that is that old things disappear."

Many residents do want the old things to stay. On the North Shore there is concern that the Residential 3 zone designed to protect the special character of Devonport, Birkenhead and Northcote is not working.

The Sills' house is quoted as a prime example. In December 2002 the Sills were refused consent to demolish. The decision said: "The loss of the existing house would erode the townscape/streetscape qualities particularly in view of its prominent location on a corner site at the beginning of King Edward Parade ... " The ruling also noted that the new house the Sills had proposed did not "compensate for the history and character of the existing house."

The Sills then applied for consent to alter the existing house with a design similar to the one proposed when seeking demolition - except that both bay windows of the original house would remain. Independent advice at the time noted "the proposal involves very substantial change". But in September 2003 the alterations were approved by Devonport Community Board members Andrew Eaglen, Dianne Hale and Mike Cohen. Astonishingly their ruling said "the heritage elements of the building's form have been retained as much as possible and this mitigates against a complete loss of the building."

It was only when building work got under way this year that the Devonport councillors began to realise what they had done. Eaglen protested that a requirement of the consent - that the King Edward Parade and Buchanan St facades "shall remain intact at all times" - had not occurred.

But even if the facade had held up and not collapsed, as the Sills claim, it would have made little difference because the approved design allowing new roof, floor, verandah and substantially altered walls meant very little from the original facade was retained anyway. As Lloyd Sills points out: "We've followed all the legal process and we've gone through all the required building and resource consents. We haven't done anything wrong."

Council enforcement officers are investigating, but given the consent granted it's hard to see how they could find any significant breach in procedure. What they're not investigating is how council planners and the councillors themselves could possibly give the alteration consent in the first place.

Eaglen argues that because alterations are "a controlled activity" the council can only impose conditions and can't decline the application. So why weren't stricter conditions imposed?

"The council has got no backbone, they refuse to stick by their rules," says Devonport Heritage's McRae, who believes fear of the Environment Court drives their cowardice. "It's quite clear - new additions should be sympathetic and original features should not be changed. At the very least you should retain the original form."

Salmond says the real problem is North Shore City lacks heritage planning expertise, especially among frontline processing staff and it doesn't buy in advice when it should. He acknowledges there's a philosophical problem, too. "No one argues about beautifully designed or fine buildings, but it is much more difficult when things are rumpty and old and grotty. I think we need representative history not just glossy history."

Lloyd Sills doesn't see inherent value in rumpty, old and grotty. He says of the original house: "It's not a heritage house. It was old, there's no doubt about that." But he argues that awful 50s and 60s changes (sun visors and Decromastic tile roof) and the building's bad state of repair meant that everything old had to be replaced, so it would have been better to start from scratch. "We've always wanted to have a house there that was sympathetic to Devonport. Rightly or wrongly we think there will be something there in the years ahead that people will think is a nice-looking house."

In hindsight, the councillors who approved the Sills' alterations are all disappointed at the outcome. Eaglen is taking a proposal to the community board to initiate changes to the district plan - especially with regard to clarifying the difference between alterations, renovation and rebuilding.

Hale is hopeful strengthened controls will ensure "in the future things like this won't happen again".

Cohen says he would like to see stronger disincentives introduced such as increased consent bonds or restrictions on future development if heritage houses are destroyed - intentionally or by neglect. There are calls too for a substantial ($200,000) fine to be imposed if there has been any breach. "The message has to get out there that council will enforce its heritage protection," says Cayford.

But for all the bravado, it's clear both on the North Shore and in Auckland City, that the real laxness when it comes to heritage protection is from within. As McRae puts it: "The rules are there in Devonport to protect heritage, but it's the political will to stand by the rules that is lacking."