Emotional feedback on village
Residents are still butting heads with a retirement village giant against its development plans for Greenlane.
A hearing into Ryman Healthcare’s resource consent application for 187 Campbell Rd was held from November 26 to December 1.
Eighteen submitters presented during the hearing and a decision is expected in January.
The former Kingsgate Hotel was bought in July to develop into a retirement village at a cost of more than $100 million.
The resource application was publicly notified on August 13.
But residents have grave concerns about the plans.
They have banded together to oppose the size of the development, the removal of more than half the trees from the site and proposed volcanic rockblasting ( East & Bays Courier, September 5).
Resident Maria de Jong says presenting at the hearing was quite an arduous process.
Most of the nearby residents are ‘‘lay people’’ and battled their way through a more than 400-page document of evi-
for the hearing, she dence says.
Representatives from the the Cornwall Park Trust Board, the Volcanic Cone Society and the Tree Council also spoke up in opposition of the plans, she says.
The council’s urban design team had a change of heart during the hearing and decided to support retaining the trees fronting Campbell Rd, despite initially supporting their removal.
‘‘I think that’s quite big for council officers to change their mind like that,’’ de Jong says.
‘‘As a resident you can feel like it’s hopeless at times. It’s quite encouraging when you get a response like that.’’
Neighbour Tania Morgan says residents are encouraging commissioners to head out to the site and see the impact first-hand.
They are hopeful a community liaison group will be formed as a result of the hearing.
‘‘A lot of the people that submitted were very emotional about it, some of them were quite stressed, but they did very well.
‘‘It was a good process to go through, definitely.’’
Multiple attempts to contact Ryman Healthcare went unanswered.