Bay watch: $500m plans for Shelly Bay
The future shape of Wellington’s Shelly Bay revamp is becoming clearer, with new plans hinting at it including more than 350 homes, a boutique hotel, a brewery, a rest home and a ferry service.
But Wellingtonians, who own a large chunk of the area, will not get a say on whether resource consent for the $500 million development on the Miramar Peninsula site should get the final tick.
The non-notified resource consent is working its way through Wellington City Council processes and council staff – not elected councillors – will decide whether it gets the green light.
According to the consent application, there will be a 140-resident rest home, a boutique hotel with 50-odd rooms, 280 apartments, 58 townhouses and 14 standalone houses at Shelly Bay.
A ferry linking the site to the city is also mooted but not elaborated on in the documents because it fell outside the scope of the consent application.
There was also potential for a community centre, micro-brewery, restaurant, cafe, artist’s studio and shop, a gym, childcare and a medical centre.
The application was submitted to the council by The Wellington Company in September.
The Wellington Company director Ian Cassels said work on Shelly Bay was long overdue. People ‘‘should be jumping from the rooftops’’ and applauding the fact something looked set to be built there.
The project would cost about $500m, and, despite rumours to the contrary, was not being funded by Chinese money.
The project also involved the Port Nicholson Block Settlement Trust, but the
People ‘‘should be jumping from the rooftops’’ and applauding the fact something looked set to be built there. The Wellington Company director Ian Cassels
exact nature of that relationship was yet to be finalised, Cassels said.
The consent application was filed under the Housing Accords Special Housing Areas Act, which was set up in 2013 to fast-track urgent housing projects and create affordable housing.
That process lessens the amount of Government red tape standing in developers’ way, but it also cuts the public out of the decision-making process.
Councillor Andy Foster said he believed most people would support the Shelly Bay plans but they should have been given a say on whether it got resource consent.
But they could eventually get a voice, Foster said, given the council owned between one-third and half of the land the development was on.
In the application, The Wellington Company argues the only immediate neighbour, the New Zealand Defence Force, should not be notified about the consent because it ‘‘should not be considered as affected’’.
Cassels said there were no concerns that the public were not being notified because there were ‘‘no real immediate neighbours’’.
Victoria University senior law lecturer Dean Knight, who specialises in local government issues, said it was ‘‘very unusual’’ for a matter to be non-notified and declined. This was because non-notified consents usually passed the necessary thresholds, so those making the decision were more likely to prescribe conditions on a development rather than halt them.