Are we being served?

In August it was announced with some fanfare that Arvida Group was to purchase an 18ha orchard in Hall Rd, Kerikeri, in order to establish a $130 million retirement village with 200 houses, an 80-bed care facility, social and service centres including a cafe, a gym, perhaps a swimming pool.

Arvida Group is new to the North, but has 29 villages nationwide contributing to its asset base in excess of $1.1 billion, a building programme expected to cost $600 million over the next seven years, and declared a $30.5m profit in the six months to September.

The company took possession of the Kerikeri land early in November, and within a few weeks had lodged resource consent applications to begin the earthworks necessary to create a grand entrance to the property, a network of roads, and to progress Stage 1, 28 houses they hope to have occupied by December

2019.

Unsurprisingly, Arvida is urging haste in the granting of these consents. Looking down the barrel of a $600m spend, it will be very keen to start getting a return on its investments. What is surprising is the proposal that even these initial consent applications should be ‘not notified,’ and therefore escape any requirement for public participation or comment. Vision Kerikeri has a long institutional memory, but members are hard pressed to recall any development of this scale being put through without at least limited notification.

The project will absorb much of the expanded capacity expected from the upgraded Kerikeri water treatment plant. It will require a planned water main down Hall Rd to be installed sooner than scheduled, and to be of a greater capacity. To ensure pedestrian safety, it will be necessary to upgrade what is currently a very narrow, quiet road, with no footpath, inadequate berms and open swales. This work will need to be done before the dramatic increase in traffic, especially heavy construction traffic, that the development would generate.

Prior to the applications being lodged, there was no engagement with mana whenua, or with owners even of adjoining properties, no comprehensive ecological survey (a tributary of the Wairoa Stream runs through the property), or any archaeological assessment.

Another large retirement village in Kerikeri may be a perfectly sound idea; there may be local demand to justify it, there may be sufficient public good from it to warrant a hefty contribution of ratepayers’ money. But where does the line get drawn. Where is the balance point between the economic costs to be borne by the public purse, the profit to be derived by the developer, and the wider social and environmental costs and benefits?

This is a calculation the district and regional councils, as regulators, must make. To do so in haste, based on seriously inadequate information, without engaging with and hearing informed views from all stakeholders, is to make a decision heavily influenced by only one side of the private/public equation. And that would be neither balanced nor fair.

"Where is the balance point between the economic costs to be borne by the public purse, the profit to be derived by the developer, and the wider social and environmental costs and benefits?"