Coastal explosion: The rise and rise of Kāpiti
It’s been on a fast track to expansion. Joel Maxwell and Virginia Fallon plot the explosion of Ka¯piti.
There’s hundreds of workers digging billions of dollars of road through a ribbon of coastal plain. Elsewhere in New Zealand the story of growth unfolds over decades. But on the Kap¯ iti Coast, for better or worse, it’s a daily show.
The two Royals are sitting in a bright, compact kitchen, which smells a bit like pan-fried whitebait fritters. There are photos on the walls in the lounge, including a black and white portrait of 10 children with crisp white shirts on dark skin. The couple had 11 kids altogether: two have died, Mum says, pointing to the picture, ‘‘that boy by Dad, the little one in the front’’.
Looking at the photos, there were enough kids for a soccer team, but they are more likely twothirds of a rugby team.
‘‘I am Wehi Royal,’’ says Dad, chuckling. ‘‘And this is Mum, Hira Royal, and now you’ve met the Royal family.’’
Both Wehi and Hira were born at the start of the 1930s.
Sunny O¯ taki, where they live, is the centre of the universe, and at the north of the Ka¯ piti Coast. The Royals went to school together, grew up and married, bought their first home and had their children here.
The coast is the strip of land that is probably the newest suburb of Wellington City. It is the end of the line for Wellington’s metro commuter rail, and the last step before the gulf before Auckland.
It is changing. It has never stopped changing. Other provincial hamlets might rust. This is rust-proofed. It has nearly $2 billion worth of chrome-plated roading projects, initiated by a former Ka¯ piti College student. It is growing explosively.
If explosions are good, and more is better, then this story is a success story.
‘People want to live here’
There are a lot of new people to squeeze on this coast.
Mostly there are fewer than 5 kilometres between the hills and beaches, and already about 52,300 people live there in the towns running north and south between Paeka¯ ka¯ riki and O¯ taki.
With 52,344 people calling the Coast home, Ka¯ piti population is set to grow to 63,685 – or 21 per cent – by 2043. Change is breathing down the district’s neck.
The mayor uses himself as an example for the way Ka¯ piti has changed over the years.
‘‘I came to live here in 1995 and I was one of about three black people here. I used to say [to one of the other black men] thank god you’re here or everyone would be staring at me.’’
Malaysian-born K Gurunathan leans back and cackles, trademark round glasses twinkling, his bald head shining.
Known as Guru, he says his adopted district is experiencing growth like never before.
The projected growth of 21 per cent in the next 25 years lines up roughly with expected growth for the country over that time. But in Ka¯ piti there is only so much space – so much supply – to satisfy the demand.
‘‘Oh yes, it’s booming,’’ says Gurunathan.
The boomtime has come thanks to the Roads of National Significance. Three projects, two under way, one completed, that amount to nearly $2b worth of four-lane expressway from Transmission Gully, through the now-completed first section of the Ka¯ piti Expressway, and a final section under way covering the northern half of the district.
The expressway was first mooted by none other than Steven Joyce, former transport minister and Kapiti College old boy.
It was the expressway that kicked off the latest changes, Guru says: taking traffic from its traditional route past the district’s shopping centres and enticing developers to swathes of land perfectly positioned for commuting to Wellington.
‘‘Every economist knows that your transport infrastructure is critical to growth – Transmission Gully is coming and people want to live here.’’
He knows it isn’t paved in gold for everyone. ‘‘It’s a beautiful thing, you drive along it and you can see the island and the views and then Ka¯ piti has gone and you haven’t stopped.’’
The thing you need to know about Ka¯ piti is that it’s a long stretch of villages previously linked by just the one road. Now it needs to find its new identity while keeping its old.
‘‘We love the fact we are very close to Wellington but we don’t want Wellington to embrace us too tightly.’’
Early in his mayoralty Guru copped flak for his suggestions that Ka¯ piti should become a retirement mecca, but it’s something he stands by.
It might be a cultural thing, but he wants a community where the old are prized and valued. Besides, the elder care industry has brought employment and opportunity for the district.
He has the research: the people who are coming were probably Wellington retirees and young families.
‘‘Anyone wanting to move here will ask two things: what is your healthcare like and what are your schools like?’’
The schools are coping, although land bought in the Waikanae township for a future school should have been bought at the beach.
But a hospital is crucial, he says.
There are other worries – a projected increase in rainfall would tax the area’s stormwater systems and a rise in tides already threatens the 1800 houses perched along the coast.
Otherwise, the mayor is ready. He wants more people in his district because he wants more diversity in this once mosttraditional of places. He’s not one of three any more.
‘People don’t get sick within working hours’
When it comes to remembering the past, everything is on hand for the Royals.
Their cottage is metres from Raukawa Marae’s wharenui, where they married in 1950 (the Anglican Church was being renovated). They live a few hundred metres from the primary school they both attended in the 1930s. They live a few hundred metres from their first home. They live less than a kilometre from where Hira Royal was born in 1932. It wasn’t in a hospital, it was in her mother’s home in Aotaki St.
‘‘Ma¯ ori families were born at home,’’ she says. ‘‘Most of the families had somebody in the family who was like the nurse, who could bring babies into the world. Most families had one of the women or kuia who could do that.’’
Hira has short grey hair, and a brisk, friendly way. She gave birth to most of her own children in O¯ taki’s maternity hospital. It closed permanently in 1995.
Wehi Royal has one-liners about the past. ‘‘The older you get, the better you was.’’
In Paraparaumu, Sue Emirali says plenty of people want something better. More than 19,000 Ka¯ piti people have spoken and they want a hospital to call their own.
‘‘That’s about 36 per cent of the population; we’re growing like topsy and without the infrastructure we’re going to crash.’’
The former health and disability advocate is behind a petition calling for a hospital to be built in Ka¯ piti on land already owned by Capital & Coast District Health Board.
‘‘I’ve heard from elderly people who have had a partner dying in Wellington Hospital and they can’t get in to visit them.
‘‘I’ve heard from families with sick children who have to decide whether they use their money on
petrol to visit or for groceries for the family.’’
Vision-impaired herself, Emirali is quick to point out she isn’t criticising other health services but they can’t compete with a fully equipped accident and medical centre open all hours.
‘‘People don’t get sick between working hours and they certainly get sick after 10pm when the last medical centre shuts.’’
Numbers quoted show that 30 per cent of Ka¯ piti’s population have a disability and, of those, 46 per cent are aged over 65.
It was a health meeting that spurred the friendly and articulate Emirali into action. ‘‘I just realised it had been going in circles for so long and as long as we continued to ask politely we weren’t going to get there.’’
Since then, it’s been the stories of those who scrawl their signatures that keep her going, she says.
An ageing population, access to outpatients appointments and fear of being cut off in a disaster are some of the reasons people sign.
It isn’t just that: while most of Ka¯ piti is zoned for Wellington Hospital, Ota¯ ki residents are seen in Palmerston North, something Emirali says is ridiculous.
‘‘Once we have 20,000 signatures and a new government, we’ll hit them with it.’’
In July, Capital & Coast District Health Board spokeswoman Rachel Haggerty said the board was committed to delivering services and supporting communities.
The board provided outreach services in Ka¯ piti for around 18 specialities, as well as diagnostic services, that can be done in the community, she said.
‘‘We are continually reassessing our region’s needs and looking at what investments we can make to ensure our communities remain well serviced and can access the health services they require.’’
‘You’ll see prices rise’
In the beginning, for five children’s worth of married life, Hira and Wehi Royal lived with Miss Moana Lochore in her big, historic home in Mill Rd. The schoolmistress for new entrants had been their teacher when they were kids.
Market gardens used to sprawl across the creek behind nearby Raukawa St, soaking up Ma¯ ori labourers in the Chinese-owned
businesses and sending off vegetables to Wellington three times a week.
Wehi Royal would join two truckloads of O¯ taki boys – about 30 in total – who headed south daily at 6am and helped build Wellington. For 37 years he worked on tram tracks, overhead cables, roads going into the city.
Other Ma¯ ori – men, women, old and young – got O¯ taki’s fertile dirt under their fingernails in the gardens. It was hard to get work anywhere else, Hira Royal says.
Eventually they bought their own home in Anzac Rd, on wha¯ nau land.
In Waikanae, Dave Munro says these days the only thing halting the rise of the subdivisions on the Ka¯ piti Coast is the land to build them on.
A Landlink project manager, Munro’s Kohekoke Park
subdivision is perched on the Waikanae hills and, although the houses are yet to be built, more than half of its 80 lots have sold.
He says the project might be dwarfed by the 800-home Nga¯ rara subdivision near Waikanae Beach but its popularity is driven by the same thing – the new road making Ka¯ piti an even more desirable place to live for Wellingtonians.
‘‘If it weren’t for the fact they had a hell of a drive to get out here they would have been here already. The growth is just a catalyst provided by the new road.’’
The area might no longer be god’s waiting room but it is still sought after by retiring Wellingtonians. Ka¯ piti residents tend to retire to Levin, Munro says.
‘‘Conservative estimates put 5000 additional homes here in the next 20 years – that’s 60 Kohekohe Parks.’’
Ka¯ piti builders are coping because the limited land ensures it; if there was endless land there would be a problem, he says. ‘‘The demand has hit the ceiling so you’ll see prices rise.’’
In future, Ka¯ piti subdivisions would contain smaller, mediumdensity blocks as traditional larger sections were carved up and sold.
There was still room for firsthome buyers among the existing stock and in O¯ taki, where prices were lower.
Figures from the Real Estate Institute tell a similar story. In June, the median price for a Ka¯ piti house was $485,000; a year before it was $425,000.
Most houses were sold in Paraparaumu. Ota¯ ki sold the fewest.
Ka¯ piti house prices in June were 18 per cent higher than a year ago, while prices in Wellington City climbed 14 per cent over the same period.
Rents reached an eight-year high and 85 new building consents were processed and issued by the council in the June 2017 quarter, compared with 60 in the previous year.
New residents will bring new children. According to the Ministry of Education, six of
Ka¯ piti’s 17 state schools are operating at or above capacity.
All six had enrolment schemes and one recently reduced the size of its enrolment zone due to roll pressure, a spokesman says.
‘‘Other schools in the same network are operating at less than 60 per cent of their capacity, which means there is currently space in the overall Ka¯ piti network.’’
Where else would you rather be?
There’s nothing more backward than two cars going forward.
Wehi Royal tells a story about the bridge that used to go over the O¯ taki River. There is still only one bridge carrying State Highway 1, if you don’t count the giant suspension bridge up the O¯ taki Gorge that leads to farms, bush, empty paddocks.
The highway bridge used to be one lane, the nation’s SH1 whittled down to a few metres, with a lay-by in the middle.
Cars from north and south would meet in the middle, and havoc would ensue, Wehi Royal says, with arguments about who’d give way. ‘‘That’s the old days.’’
In Waikanae, Maude Heath pulls no punches. Feisty and funny, the arrival of this fiery gallery owner into the town’s shopping centre set her corner site ablaze with colour and quirk.
An artist and former film location scout, Heath comes from art royalty, her beloved father Eric Heath the renowned cartoonist.
‘‘I thought we were f ..... ,’’ she says of the day the main drag became a ghost road. ‘‘I really did.’’
They weren’t, not really, but the day the expressway opened it seemed no one drove down the former SH1, Heath says. ‘‘I didn’t realise we were so dependent on the road until then.’’
The traffic is creeping back and the growing number of locals is helping but business is still down in Heath’s gallery.
A Ka¯ piti resident since 2009, she is hopeful for the future of both Waikanae’s tiny commercial hub and Ka¯ piti’s sprawling arts community.
‘‘Just look at Ka¯ piti, where else would you rather be?’’
‘We’re all Wellingtonians’
For work, Wellington is a magnet. But the money goes both ways.
According to the Ka¯ piti district council, the district receives $50.2 million from Wellingtonians every year, much more than any other district outside the capital.
About 4700 commuters make the trip to the city every day, and, combined with the 2400 who travel to Porirua and the Hutt Valley, bring annual wages of $481m back to Ka¯ piti.
Wellington Mayor Justin Lester says any boost for Ka¯ piti is a good thing for the city.
While Wellington would always be the centre for trade and commerce, the full expressway and soon-to-be-completed. Transmission Gully mean more options for those who work in the city, Lester says.
‘‘We’re all Wellingtonians, we all support the Hurricanes.’’
However, Retail NZ’s Greg Harford says a drop in business since the expressway opened has Paraparaumu and Waikanae retailers worried.
O¯ taki’s SH1 shop owners are concerned about the next stage of the road – due to open in 2020 – which would bypass them, he says.
‘‘Looking ahead, O¯ taki, with its reputation as an outlet shopping destination, is reasonably wellpositioned for the next stage of the expressway opening.
The flipside was the new road made it easier for travellers to access shops in Ka¯ piti Rd.
Despite the worries, council figures show a healthy economy that grew by 4.9 per cent over the June 2017 year, compared with 2.6 per cent for the Wellington region and 2.8 per cent for New Zealand.