Building at Hanley’s Farm starts
A POUR of concrete has marked a major milestone in Queenstown’s largest housing development.
The foundation for the first house in Hanley’s Farm, between Jacks Point and Frankton, went down yesterday morning.
GJ Gardner construction supervisor Jim Peacock said the framing for the 208sq m Shepherd Rd home, which it is building for a young couple, would start next week.
It had also begun earthworks for six more homes out of the 20 it was building in the development’s first stage.
Having waited nearly two years for their titles, many section owners had consented plans for their builds and were ‘‘poised and ready to go’’ with their building companies, Mr Peacock said.
‘‘I think it’s going to go ballistic here.’’
The subdivision, projected to have 1750 sections, is being developed by Melbournebased RCL Group. Chief executive David Wightman said it was pleasing to get the first batch of 80odd titles issued, on June 12, by the Queenstown Lakes District Council.
‘‘It took a long time. I’d like to hope that was a oneoff experience and there might be a bit more efficiency going forward.
‘‘I think we lodged our documentation at the start of February, so it took that long, then we had a few frustrations from adjoining landowners in the intervening period.
‘‘But this was the first stage, and a fairly big one, so it had some levels of complexity about it.’’
Mr Wightman said the company had held back about 20 sections in stage 1 while it completed work on a watercourse running through the area.
He anticipated the titles for those sections to be issued in the next four weeks.
A total of 247 sections have been released in four stages so far, most recently 72 in April last year.
Mr Wightman said there would be a ‘‘progressive rollout’’ of titles for the next three stages between now and April next year.
There were also plans for a new release of sections later in the year, for which he expected strong demand.
There was a ‘‘latent demand for sections of all types and configurations’’ in Queenstown.