New community ready to flourish in Richmond
Residents could be living at a 71-lot subdivision in Richmond West in seven months, as part of a town-sized development taking shape on the Waimea Plains.
Most of the 24 two- and threebedroom complete-package villas for the Fields development have been sold off plans at between $535,000 and $559,000, as have the 31 standard sections, which range from $260,000 to $285,000.
The Fields will also have 10 two-storey townhouses overlooking Poutama Stream, priced between $637,000 and $643,000, along with six larger townhouses overlooking Borck Creek, which range in price from $750,000 to $780,000.
Its 71 lots are part of a wider development on 51ha bordered by Lower Queen St and McShane Rd that includes a $130 million Arvida Group retirement village under construction, called Waimea Plains.
Richmond West Development Company Ltd is the owner, developer and marketer of the site, on which a larger residential development called The Meadows is also earmarked.
Director Andrew Spittal said The Meadows would have about 472 lots, staged over about seven years. The plans for The Meadows were before Tasman District Council.
With The Fields, the developers had ‘‘tried to do a snapshot of what we want to do for [The Meadows]’’, Spittal said.
‘‘What works, how much intensification versus standard; it’s given us a bit of market research. What we’re finding is the three-bedroom double-garage villa is hot off the press.’’
Progress has been rapid at the site, which was announced as a Special Housing Area (SHA) in August 2017.
‘‘When we went for our SHA, we knew that there was a bubble in Richmond that needed to be addressed and . . . we were going to address that using the SHA project to bring land forward,’’ Spittal said.
The move ‘‘had worked’’ because the company only purchased the land on March 31, 2017.
‘‘We’ve gone in that time from having non-residential-zoned land with no consents to having . . . a rest home under way, 71 lots [in The Fields] and a resource consent [application] in for the next 472 lots,’’ he said. ‘‘We’ll have people living in here in the next six to seven months.’’
He said the council had ‘‘bought into the concept’’ and had worked well with the developers.
Developers often got a bad rap, Spittal said. However, they had ‘‘delivered’’ with the Richmond West site.
‘‘We said we’re going to bring the prices down – we’ve done that. We’ve delivered and we’ve delivered smaller, affordable and
‘‘We’ll have people living in here in the next six to seven months.’’ Andrew Spittal, Richmond West Development Company
larger [properties], and a retirement village.’’
The villas and townhouses in The Fields would come fully landscaped with fences, paving, decks, and even clotheslines and letterboxes, he said.
The builders of the homes in the development were G J Gardner, Jennian Homes and Milestone. ‘‘It just happens to be that the four shareholders [of Richmond West Development Company] are the same shareholders as those [building] companies,’’ Spittal said.
The Richmond West Development Company project sits adjacent to other residential developments in the area, including the ApplebyField SHA with a potential yield of 250 homes.
A new primary school is tipped for the area.
Spittal said he believed that once all the developments were completed, Richmond West would have about 1445 new dwellings, making it ‘‘bigger than Brightwater and Wakefield combined’’.