Residents worried about road works on village site
Residents of a quiet Kerikeri street want their road made safer before construction of a major retirement village begins.
Auckland-based Arvida Group plans to spend $130 million building about 200 villas and apartments, as well as a care centre with up to 80 beds, at the end of Hall Rd, a no-exit residential street off Kerikeri Rd.
The company hopes to start earthworks as soon as next month, and to have the first 28 units ready by December 2019. The 18ha property is currently an orchard.
David Clendon, a former Green MP who lives on Hall Rd, said residents had mixed views on the development itself, but all wanted road safety issues addressed before work started.
“That’s the one thing everyone’s absolutely unanimous and adamant about,” he said. “Not everyone in the road is opposed to the village — far from it — but they’re all concerned about the safety aspects of it.”
Hall Rd is a narrow 5.5m with a hill limiting visibility, open drains and no berm where pedestrians or cyclists can avoid traffic.
Arvida’s resource consent applications showed the company planned to move 5000 cubic metres of aggregate on to the site, about 500 truckloads by Mr Clendon’s estimate, from midJanuary to the end of February. The rest of the earthworks were expected to continue to March 2020.
The company also planned to install a large culvert, triple the size of the current one, for a creek that feeds into the Wairoa Stream.
Mr Clendon said timing of earthworks overlapped with summer holidays, when children were likely to be outdoors.
A street meeting on November 29 drew 37 people, 65 per cent of Hall Rd’s 44 households.
Beth Clarke, a mother of three aged six and under, was concerned about the safety of her children, especially with no footpaths and limited verges.
“I’ve got no objection to the actual retirement village, but I’m concerned about the lackadaisical Hall Rd resident David Clendon says the experience of residents living near another new retirement complex in Kerikeri is a “cautionary tale” of what can happen to promised road upgrades.
Residents on Rainbow Falls Rd, the only access to the booming Quail Ridge development, were assured footpaths would be built and the road strengthened to handle extra traffic. However, they didn’t realise the developer was not required to pay for road improvements until Stage II was complete and a planned care centre was occupied,.
Five years later Stage II was finished but the care facility was still three years away from opening, Mr Clendon said. Rainbow Falls Rd residents would have been waiting eight years by the time they got their promised footpaths.
Safety concerns on Hall Rd were more pressing. Rainbow Falls Rd was flatter and wider than Hall Rd and had wide berms. approach to safety on our road, and the speed at which it’s happening without proper consultation with locals,” she said.
Mr Clendon said the consent applications “glossed over” road safety, environmental effects on a stream that crossed the property, noise and dust, and the extra pressure on Kerikeri’s infrastructure.
When residents challenged Arvida about the suitability of Hall Rd for the expected volume of traffic, the clear message they got was that the road was the responsibility of the Far North District Council, he said. Consent applications lodged with the district and regional councils were for the earthworks only.
A spokesman for Arvida said the company was fully committed to working with the local community.