The Mount Albert Grammar School farm beside housing in the area. Photo / Dean Purcell
The Mount Albert Grammar School farm beside housing in the area. Photo / Dean Purcell
One of Auckland’s top public schools is building a staff car park on $150 million of gifted inner city farmland that is earmarked for agricultural education.
Mount Albert Grammar School (MAGS) said the 660sq m car park would only occupy a “small section” of its 8.1ha ASB MAGS Farm.
But the construction has worried some in the community because of a loss of inner city greenery and a protective covenant requiring the land be used to teach farming.
MAGS principal Patrick Drumm said the car park would be primarily used by teachers but visitors may also use it in future as part of a planned agribusiness “Experience Centre”.
“The new car park will be an essential and valuable asset for the school.”
A view of the ASB MAGS Farm from Mt Albert. Photo / Dairy Women's Network
Drumm said the car park didn’t violate the terms of the farm’s land covenant.
The protections were set up when the land was first acquired in the early 1900s and require that it will always be used to teach agriculture and horticulture.
The protections also allowed for about 800sq m of land to be developed, Drumm said.
That had enabled the school and the land owner, the Mount Albert Grammar Foundation, to gain council approval for a larger application to build the agribusiness Experience Centre, he said.
Mount Albert Grammar School headmaster Patrick Drumm. Photo / supplied
The car park was approved as part of that application.
“This section [of farmland] is not utilised for grazing or other purposes involving stock due to the boundary being on Alberton Ave - and potential health and safety considerations,” Drumm said.
“The registered restrictive covenant on the land is not contravened by this development.”
Some people posting on the local Mount Albert Community Facebook page questioned whether the school was paving paradise as per the famous song.
They sought reassurance the car park was “in accord with the letter if not the spirit” of the covenant and lease agreements.
Other people said the school needed the parks and that the car park was only a small part of the land and “the farm will live on”.
Drumm, meanwhile, said the new car park would help the school - now New Zealand’s second biggest with about 3600 students and 400 staff - accommodate its rapidly growing community.
It also took teacher cars off nearby streets and helped mitigate a recent loss of school car parks to the neighbouring community aquatic centre, he said.
Members of the public using the Mount Albert Aquatic Centre previously had to drive through the school’s grounds to get to the swimming pool.
That created a “major safety concern”, Drumm said.
Due to that, a new entrance to the public pool had now been built directly off Alberton Ave.
MAGS then donated some car parks to the aquatic centre that had previously been shared by the organisations, Drumm said.
The farmland has also recently been enlarged by The MAGs Foundation after it bought a home further along Alberton Ave, next to the farm.
“In essence, this further expanded the farm footprint and is currently leased to the school, providing an accommodation option for staff who are part of the school’s agribusiness curriculum programme,” Drumm said.
Back in 2022, when ASB donated the land to MAGS, Drumm said the covenant on the land ensured the “original purpose of the farm remains protected”.
“In essence, it locks in the wishes of the Kerr-Taylor family at the time of the original 1933 transaction that the land be used for agricultural education,” he said.
The farm was established in 1932, when the Auckland Institute of Horticulture decided that city kids were losing farming knowledge and asked the school to run special programmes to keep up interest.
ASB chief executive Vittoria Shortt with MAGs principal Patrick Drumm when the farmland was handed over in 2022. Photo / Supplied
The Auckland Savings Bank got involved on a charitable basis and legislation was passed to allow the bank to buy land from the neighbouring Kerr-Taylor sisters’ farm and lease it to the school for a peppercorn rent, MAGS said in 2022.
In 2013, the school and the bank agreed to a new lease on a 99-year term for $1/year.
MAGS is New Zealand’s second-largest school after Rangitoto College and was founded in 1922.
