Shopping-centre veto angers town

Transit New Zealand is under fire for trying to block multimillion-dollar plans for a retirement village and shopping centre in Warkworth while delaying a sorely needed traffic bypass.

The roading agency says there is no money available to build bypasses around Warkworth and several other Rodney District towns, including Wellsford and Kumeu, which are also crying out for relief from severe highway traffic congestion.

Transit has further upset Warkworth residents by allegedly trying to veto plans for a $55 million shopping centre and adjoining $35 million retirement village of 250 beds in the burgeoning town's western sector, around Woodcocks Rd.

Commissioners have adjourned until next month an application for planning changes to cater for the developments, directing Transit and the Rodney District Council to discuss the impact of adding a third set of traffic lights to State Highway 1 in the town.

Transit warns this will cause unacceptable interference to traffic, but Rodney Mayor John Law said yesterday that congestion was already intolerable and the agency was simply reinforcing a case for a western bypass.

He described the SH1-Hill St intersection to Matakana and Snells Beach as "the worst in New Zealand", even though it was controlled by lights.

"Warkworth definitely needs a bypass. It's been talked about for 10 to 15 years and they still haven't decided what the route should be. It is not good enough," said Mr Law.

"I have warned Transit of community unrest - people have had enough."

Neil Barr, of Perrendale Holdings, which wants to develop a 9ha retail site with a supermarket and shops of a heritage flavour reflecting the town's rural roots, noted yesterday that a zone for these was already included in a council "structure" plan for Warkworth.

Economic research group Berl ranks Rodney as the country's second-fastest-growing district, behind Queenstown-Lakes, and Mr Barr said the council endorsed the structure plan late last year to cope with expectations of the Auckland Regional Growth Strategy.

He wondered why Transit did not raise its concerns when the district council called for submissions on the plan.

Mr Barr said lights were needed in any case at the Woodcocks Rd intersection for safety reasons because of growing school and industrial traffic.

He questioned the precedent he feared Transit was setting by trying to hold up the largest single investment planned for northern Rodney in 30 years, one that he said would prevent a serious "leakage" of shoppers to other areas.

His case was supported by Warkworth Grey Power president Colin Greenslade, who said the retirement village was eagerly awaited by elderly people finding it difficult to maintain their own homes, particularly those who had been widowed.

He said Transit's attempt to veto such a development posed a serious constitutional question of whether planning controls rested with locally elected authorities or "unelected bureaucrats who appear to have unbelievable power".

Transit's transport planning general manager, Wayne McDonald, said there was simply no money available for a bypass for probably 20 years and his agency had to do what it could to protect its existing highway network.

"What we see is what we've got - we have to work very hard looking after the state highway through Warkworth," he said at a public hearing in Auckland of submissions on Transit's draft 10-year highway plan.

Mr McDonald accused the district council of dissecting the Warkworth community by encouraging developments straddling the highway "without making provision for getting from one side to the other".

"It is the council's responsibility - they are capable of building an overpass."

Mr McDonald yesterday denied trying to put restrictions on developments in areas specifically zoned for them, but said a "future urban" designation over Mr Barr's site did not envisage "a huge traffic-generating complex".

Mayor Law said the town had limited room to grow to the east of the main road, where the existing shopping centre is hemmed in by the Mahurangi River, and it was not his council's responsibility to build a multimillion-dollar bridge across a state highway.

He said the council had already offered to provide a piece of a reserve next to the Hill St intersection for improvements by Transit, after paying $800,000 for land to replace it.