Weraiti resident says developers too greedy

A RESIDENT living close to the proposed Weraiti Hill development has joined the protesters, saying she's not against development but "would be happy if the developers stuck to the district plan of one house for every hectare".
Kathryn Tomlinson was commenting in response to a story in Monday's Wairarapa Times-Age in which developer Grant McLachlan, of Stronvar Properties, said the idea was far from unique but it is new to Wairarapa and around his Masterton office the development is known as the "battle for Weraiti Hill".
He said he had also referred to the project as one of his "most challenging when it comes to trying to stretch people's imaginations out of the square".
Mrs Tomlinson said the reason people weren't interested in having their imaginations stretched was that the proposed subdivision "stretched what is considered reasonable in terms of putting numerous houses clustered together in a rural environment".
She said developing streets of housing that way would normally been seen in town.
"The proposed subdivision allows for houses to be placed 5m from their boundary and that's potentially two houses just 10m apart".
"My concern with clustering so many houses together is that it concentrates sewerage, stormwater, traffic and many other housing-related issues in a confined space, and this cannot possibly have negligible environmental effects."
Mr McLachlan said on Monday that he "honestly thought the farmpark concept of people not having to care for farmland but having the advantage of rural living around them would have been one exciting to most".
But Mrs Tomlinson said the land subdivided should be directly attached to each house site.
The present resource consent was seeking average section sizes of a half-acre (.2ha) with the balance of land being within the farmpark instead of attached to the house.
This, she said, creates the look of town streets in a rural landscape.
"Other than sheer greed what could possibly be the motivation? Much of the land being developed is very steep hill country and only some areas are possible to use as building sites.
"It is conceivable that this is why the remaining area has been put forward as farmpark, jointly-owned land. "
She said providing resource consent for a farmpark-style subdivision such as this one set a precedent and what was to stop more "town-style" subdivisions popping up all over rural Wairarapa.
"We have towns already. Why not cluster houses around them and link them to existing services such as sewage and water?"
She said people chose to live rurally to have some space from neighbours and to pursue rural interests and a subdivision such as the one proposed changed the rural character of the area and needed careful consideration.