Residents fight Euro village
Birkenhead group says developers try to exploit loophole
Plans for a “European hilltop village” overlooking the Waitemata¯ Harbour have residents fuming about a possible loophole allowing apartment blocks to be built in streets zoned for single houses.
Sino Dutch Developments Ltd is making a fresh application to Auckland Council to build 10 apartments in a four-storey block at Tizard Rd above the Birkenhead ferry terminal and yacht club.
After battling company directors Gerard Reuters and Guang Yong Chen’s first plans last year, local residents are gearing up to oppose revised plans on a long-vacant section with million-dollar harbour views.
The group Save The Point maintains the apartment block developers are attempting to exploit a loophole in the Auckland Unitary Plan intended to allow retirement villages to be built in the Single House Zone.
The group believes the development could set a precedent for apartment blocks in the zone, which was put in place to “maintain and enhance” traditional leafy suburbs and covers 20 per cent of the city’s urban area.
Last year, local Richard Bourke told the Herald that “if this goes through, all bets are off because almost anything at all can go through”.
Geordie Lindsay-Russell, who grew up in Tizard Rd, said the group was not anti-development or nimbys, but whatever was built had to be done within the rules put there for a reason.
He was also disappointed a number of pōhutukawa trees on the site had died after being poisoned, the potential loss of further bush cover if the development went ahead and the impact on views from Chelsea Point, Herne Bay and the harbour bridge.
“I love nature and bush and how green it is. This flies in the face of New Zealand’s clean, green image,” Lindsay-Russell said.
Geordie’s father, Nigel Russell, said everything was wrong about the development, from the scale of the project to having to remove about 2000 truckloads of soil down the very narrow cul-de-sac where a rubbish truck got stuck this month.
Brian Putt, the planner for Sino Dutch Developments, said: “The design concept is like a European hilltop village built around a central courtyard. It’s very classy.”
He said the residents were being unfair on the developer who was simply following the rules in the Unitary Plan which allowed for an “integrated residential development” on sites greater than 2000sq m in the Single House Zone.
This was included in the zone at the request of the Retirement Village Association and generally applied to residential developments as long as they had community facilities, he said.
In the case of Tizard Rd, he said, the apartment block was a single building with a swimming pool, gym and community meeting room.
“It is not a loophole,” Putt said. He emphasised the developer had nothing to do with the poisoning of the pōhutukawa trees, saying they had been built into the design for the project.
The case is heading back to a second hearing after the first was adjourned in December last year.