One family to build them all
If the northern suburbs of Wellington were a Monopoly board, the Callenders would be winning the game.
The last remaining patches of rural land where new suburbs can be built are all owned by the family and related companies.
Rodney Callender is known as the godfather of Churton Park for his involvement in the development of the suburb since its inception in the 1960s. He has since passed the business of developing Wellington’s new suburbs to his son, Guy.
The duo own 542ha of land around the fringes of Wellington’s northern suburbs, according to Land Information New Zealand data and the Companies Register. The pair own the land through various companies including Hunters Hill and Best Farm, not in their own names.
Almost all of the Callender land is zoned for housing – three new suburbs called Upper Stebbings, Glenside West and Lincolnshire Farm are outlined in the proposed District Plan.
Wellington City Council signals that these could be the last new suburbs. “Once these areas are exhausted the city will have no further greenfield capacity identified,” reads the council’s latest Housing Capacity Assessment.
Compared to Christchurch or Auckland, Wellington is constrained in terms of possible greenfield sites, the name given to areas of farmland that can be converted to housing at the edge of the city.
Guy Callender said the land currently under development was more like in-fill than traditional greenfield development, because the farmland was between existing areas of housing. “To me, greenfield subdivision is something that is say, in Waikanae, or is pushing the edge of the city and forcing people to commute right out to the edge.”
The Callenders’ land has capacity for more than 2500 homes, a mixture of terraced and standalone houses.
Some of the greenfield land is north of Churton Park, while the rest is east of Grenada Village near Woodridge.
The Petone to Grenada Link Rd was a welcome announcement for the eastern land, known as Lincolnshire Farm.
Housing Minister Chris Bishop has touted opening up land for housing as a good reason to build the road.
Guy Callender said the road would hold benefits for the new subdivision, which was geographically at the centre of the region. If an off-ramp ran into the suburb, it would link the area with an easy connection to Wellington, the Hutt and Porirua.
His father Rodney has been a longtime supporter of the road, getting on board in 2005 when he described it as a “huge benefit” to the area.
The first stage of Lincolnshire Farm,
about 400 houses, was already under development with or without the motorway, Guy Callender said.
The future of greenfield development in Wellington city is all in the hands of Callender. He said the process of building new housing took a “long, long time” because of regulations and resource consenting – usually seven years or longer from planning to having a completed house.
“Withthesereasonablylargedevelopments, it’s an ongoing, incremental development of these areas really. We’re not going out and buying land after it’s been rezoned [for housing].”
The approach of developing a new subdivision was always to stage development and gradually expand the suburb, because it was simply too costly to build thousands of new roads, pipes and houses all at the same time.
Back in 2017 Justin Lester accused the Callenders of worsening the city’s housing shortage by landbanking areas the city needed.
Callender said the comment was “completely wrong” and misinterpreted the reason for delay, which was the red tape surrounding development.
“Every year, really, something will come along to make development more difficult.”
Since the days his father was developing the first lots in Churton Park during the 1970s, it had gone from being very easy to very difficult, Callender said.
Long-time Churton Park resident Roger Ellis said the suburb lacked amenities and community areas for a long time.
Until 2013 when Churton Park Village opened, the only shop was a small dairy. On the residents’ association, Ellis pushed for facilities to build a sense of community with neighbours.
“Those things happen based on trust, if residents and neighbours spend time with each other … One dairy was not enough to build social capital on, as much as the guy was a really nice guy.”
He was instrumental in leading a community campaign to open a second primary school (Amesbury School) in the early 2000s, but it was an uphill battle.
Ellis hoped there would be more forward planning for facilities like shopping centres and schools as the suburb continued its sprawl northwards.
Locals Irma and Mikel Huth remember the days of Churton Park having one dairy, one school and nothing else.
The couple, who moved to New Zealand in 2003 from Singapore and Germany, love the fast-growing suburb. They decided on Churton Park because it had a reputation as a good, safe suburb with space for families.
When they moved in their house looked out across farmland, to the hills on the other side of the valley, where they would see cows grazing. Irma loved to listen to the rustling of the pine trees, which sounded like a waterfall.
“I come from a concrete jungle, Singapore,” Irma said. “So I wanted to see green, green and more green.”
Their two daughters, now aged 16 and 20, went to school at Churton Park Primary. When Amesbury School was announced in 2009, the family couldn’t believe there would be enough students to support another primary school.
Now when the Huths look across the valley they can see housing where there used to be cows.
Traffic is their biggest concern with the ever-expanding suburb, which in 2023 had a population of 8000 according to Statistics NZ. While it used to take just 15 minutes to get to the city in the early 2000s, even at rush hour, the journey now took more like 45 minutes or even an hour.
Irma said they could hear the constant buzz of construction from the valley, but the new homes didn’t bother the family.
“New people come in and you can actually see the houses looking better and better. They are improved upon.”
The couple were surprised at how quickly the suburb grew after the new school opened in 2012. The next year a supermarket and cafe opened in the town centre. Their medical centre expanded from Johnsonville to set up a local clinic. Mikel hoped that a movie theatre or a pub might be next on the cards.
The expansion of the suburb towards the north will involve more forward planning, although that has the downside of more red tape for developers.
Council plans for Upper Stebbings and Glenside West required flat grassed areas, play equipment, a network of tracks, bus stops and pedestrian and cycling facilities.
The larger Lincolnshire Farms would require all of the above along with a community centre, supermarket and town centre with at least six other shops.
Greenfield developments are controversial for their effects on the environment. Paving over vegetation creates run off and floods streams with silt from construction.
Greater Wellington Regional Council is going through a process of tightening up the regulations around greenfield development.
Regional councillor Thomas Nash disagreed with that characterisation and said it was about making sure developers were covering the “real cost” of the suburb.
“Literally the only people that benefit from a greenfields-first housing and urban development policy setting are the people who own the land ... [They] have bought it for very little, and want to sell those sections for a massive profit.”
He said the current system was not charging developers enough to cover the full cost of greenfields development, which included freshwater pollution from run-off and having to expand bus routes to cover new areas.
Building on new land was the old-fashioned way of increasing housing stock, as opposed to zoning existing suburbs for higher-density townhouses and apartments.
New Zealand’s urban development plans have relied on greenfields for new housing “basically forever”, said Nash, but it was not sustainable going forward unless developers started picking up the tab for the effects of new subdivisions.
Eric Crampton, chief economist at the New Zealand Initiative, was more supportive of greenfield developments, but agreed they needed to cover their own costs.
Crampton said councils needed to rethink how they released land to be zoned for housing. He urged councils to permit new greenfields if developers were willing to install the required infrastructure.
“If the upzoning doesn’t come with an implicit promise of free infrastructure but instead comes with a requirement that the development cover its own cost, there’s a lot fewer reasons to say no.”
Councils tended to stage greenfield zoning, to avoid having to provide all of the required infrastructure at once. That slowed down the process and made it easy for people to buy up the land in advance of housing being enabled.
The lack of competition in Wellington was a problem. Because the Callenders – effectively one owner – control almost all of the land zoned for new housing, there was not much competition within Wellington.
“If all of the land that council is willing to zone for new subdivisions is owned by a single person, that rezoning still provides some competitive pressure to help moderate land prices within town,” Crampton said.
“But it does not do nearly as much good as more extensive rezoning that ensures more competitive urban land markets.”