Red-zone driveways up for rent?
A few lucky New Brighton residents may get a boost to their beachfront properties under a new city council plan.
Nearly 30 driveways on red-zoned properties in Southshore have sat unused for years. Soon, adjoining landowners might be able to rent them for a song – a 35-year lease for $1.
The 28 driveways off Rocking Horse Rd once accessed residences on or near the estuary. Those houses were redzoned and demolished and ownership of the sections – and their driveways – fell to the Christchurch City Council.
The driveways run perpendicular to Rocking Horse Rd and are two or more sections deep. They abut properties farther from the estuary that were not redzoned and remained occupied.
One driveway roughly measured by The Press was 4m wide and 34m long, giving a potential 136m² win to a lucky neighbour.
Some landowners on Rocking Horse Rd did well when the Southshore red zone was created. They got uninterrupted views across green space and the estuary, for free. Under the council’s plan, only adjacent neighbours will be offered the peppercorn leases.
The Waitai Coastal-Burwood-Linwood Community Board will consider the scheme at a meeting on Monday.
The driveways are a headache for the council. The parks department maintained them (not often, some residents said) and some felt unsafe using them to access the estuary due to their narrow width and presence of ambush sites along their length. The council consulted on selling the land to neighbours when considering the Estuary Edge project last year, but nothing came of it.
One Rocking Horse Rd resident said she registered an interest in buying a driveway with the council and was disgruntled that only leases would be offered. A council spokesperson said staff wanted to “keep options open”. Sea level rise is likely to affect South Shore and in time the council will begin adaptation planning for the area.
The resident planned to run a native plant garden along her strip.
Another resident said a neighbour
used a driveway as a right of way to his garage and leasing it for another purpose wasn’t possible.
Many of the driveways inspected by The Press were tar-sealed. Some fences were made of sturdy blocks and not cheap to move. Some were already used to store trailers.
Vegetable gardens had sprung up in others. Many were weedy.
If two neighbours wanted the same driveway, they could split it down the middle, council officers wrote in a report to the Waitai Coastal-Burwood-Linwood Community Board.
Building a new house or extension on the leased land will not be allowed. “One of our objectives is to keep long-term options open and allowing buildings with a design life of 50-plus years is inconsistent with this aim,” said the council spokesperson.
Tenants could discuss other structures such as garden sheds and decks with the council.
Not all red-zoned driveways would be offered to neighbours. Five would be kept as mid-block access-ways to the red zone and estuary edge. The maximum distance from anywhere on Rocking Horse Rd to an entry point would be 150m.
It was unclear what impact the leases would have on rates.