Developer John Hay has ticked another box on the Taupo Quay apartments project.
Developer John Hay has ticked another box on the Taupo Quay apartments project.
The developer looking to create a new apartment block out of the former Chronicle building on Taupo Quay has lodged a resource consent application with council.
The application for the "Bridgewater Quay" apartments comprises 198 pages. It was lodged on Thursday afternoon.
Developer John Hay said it had been ahuge effort from everyone involved and he was relieved to reach this stage of the project.
"There's times where you think you're never going to get there, there's just more and more things," Hay said.
"There's a lot more involved than I ever anticipated there would be but there's nothing in it that I felt was a waste of time or unnecessary, they're all steps that are necessary to make sure we did the right thing with the building and especially in regards to the safety of the people who will be occupying it.
"Each step along the way you've got to climb one rung of the ladder before moving on to the next one."
Potential flooding is one aspect of the project Hay said he had taken very seriously but said the science around the eventuality of a flood was unpredictable.
"The building has never been breached, it's never taken flood water in 50 years since it was built so that's a positive thing, but we're also mitigating against an even worse flood than 2015.
"One of the things is by building a perimeter wall, it'll provide around another metre of tolerance for flooding, if it breaches that wall and water enters the building it'll mean the whole of Whanganui is underwater."
In putting together the resource consent Hay spoke to authorities in Townsville, where record flood levels were experienced earlier this year.
"You get advice from everywhere, there are a lot of places in the world that have conditions that create floods and it was great to speak to people who have actually experienced it and learn how they handled it."
An artist's impression of the Bridgewater Quay apartments
Photo / Supplied
The next step of the process is marketing and Hay says he's planning a location for people interested in the apartments.
"We're going to step up a sort of information centre on Victoria Ave so that we have a central point where local people can come and have a look and grab a brochure.
"One of the requirements of funding is we need to achieve some pre-sales, so initially we'll be endeavouring to do that here locally in Whanganui and thereafter we will look to Wellington and Auckland where we've receiving quite a lot of interest from."
Hay is aware for some the project seems to taking a while to progress but he says it's a complicated process.
"Part of the delay is that we've sort of pre-negotiated quite a few of the requirements in the act rather than just submit something and get a whole lot of responses back, the planner has actually been working with council through issues as they've cropped up, so we think what we've lodged won't be controversial and it's content that council knows about.
