Brian Rudman: Time for Orewa to recognise its destiny and start growing up

Rodney Mayor John Law says talk of high-rise residential towers a la Surfers Paradise for Orewa is scaremongering.

Why? To me, it's the most adventurous suggestion I've heard for breathing new life back into this underused regional playground.

It's certainly more fun than the "exciting and realistic vision" Mr Law says we'll find in the draft master plan for the township to be unveiled next month.

That's if the hints Mr Law has been dropping about its contents are accurate. Among these are that the maximum height of buildings will be "significantly less" than the current district scheme ceiling of 10 floors. He also wants to cut back regional growth targets by 5000.

While we all nod off in the face of this underwhelming prospect, across the Tasman in the Sodom and Gomorrah that Mr Law seems desperate to dissociate himself from, the happy folk of Surfers Paradise are celebrating the completion of the world's tallest residence, the 80-floor beachfront Q1 Tower.

This skyscraper houses 526 apartments, along with assorted facilities, including a 78th floor meeting room which would be just perfect for Dr Brash to deliver his annual scare-the-people address.

Given the choice between creating a mini-Surfers Paradise at Orewa or trying a quick cosmetic makeover of this tired old suburbia by the sea, there's surely no contest.

What the mayor is foreshadowing is certainly a flip-flop from earlier council policy which is summarised in the findings of an August 2004 report by Nexus Planning and Research, commissioned by his council, to survey Orewa residents' opinion on growth.

"The council's concern is how to manage the long-term growth targets for Orewa and the Hibiscus Coast but still protect the rural look and feel for the rest of the district.

The council sees high-rise buildings in the town centre as a logical way to handle growth."

The new policy seems to be to buckle to the opposition of the oldies and pretend growth is not happening.

Mayor Law might as well take his mayoral throne down to the golden sands and declare the tide is no longer coming in.

Growth is going to happen to Orewa, coming ready or not, and part of the blame for that goes to the very people of Orewa who successfully bullied successive governments into building great motorways to and past their doorsteps.

But having ensured estate agents can now promote Orewa properties as a quick 25-minute drive from the Auckland CBD, these same people want to pretend it's still their sleepy hollow to do with what they want.

Orewa has one 12-level apartment building and what a struggle that was. What it needs is a few neighbours. Admittedly 80 floors might be testing the market unduly, but a few more modestly sized towers providing holiday or permanent accommodation within walking distance of this wonderful beach can only be to most of Auckland's advantage. Across the region there is a developing acceptance that growing up has to replace growing out as the prime driver of our town planning models.

Nowhere is the pressure to develop rural land greater than it is along the coastal fringes. Concentrating growth in places like Orewa, which is already covered by undistinguished boxes, seems an eminently sensible solution.

Unlike Mr Law, retiring Destination Orewa Beach chairman Alan Clarke supports going up. On his organisation's website he says he wants 10-storey high-rises around the central business district with five to seven storeys for the rest of Orewa.

He wants to combine this with less site coverage per section. Site coverage of only 20 to 25 per cent site would leave room for trees, pools, landscaping and walkways, he says.

Unfortunately, most Orewans don't seem to agree. Not yet anyway.

In the 2004 Nexus survey, 58 per cent were against buildings "up to seven storeys" and the opposition grew dramatically with height, with 79 per cent against "up to 10 storeys" and 89 per cent against "up to 15 storeys".

But at least the young folk were more sympathetic to growth, with 48 per cent of people aged 15 to 29 supporting seven-storey development in central Orewa.

Support dropped steadily by age, with just 22 per cent of those over 60 years agreeing.

It seems obvious to me we should be listening to the young people on this one.

It's their world that Mr Law is setting out to design, not his or mine.