Kiwis quick to buy unique island sections
Just six lots left to sell on $ 200m creation
The first man- made island at Coromandel’s $ 1.5 billion Whitianga Waterways will be opened tonight and most sections on the 11ha, $ 200m island have already been sold.
Leigh Hopper, chief executive of Hopper Developments, said Endeavour Island had 109 residential lots where more than 300 people would live and only about six sections remained for sale.
Fifty of the 109 lots are on the new canal or waterway, he said.
Some new homes have already been built on the 600sq m to 1000sq m island sections which sold for $ 400,000 to $ 1m- plus, Hopper said.
Access to the i sland i s via Endeavour Bridge.
Hopper plans to build his own new home on a 3000sq m island section facing the new canal, with four “glamping” tents for staff, family and friends.
Endeavour Island i s the first of three planned islands in the waterways. It was named after Captain James Cook’s Royal Navy research vessel.
Hopper said the name of the second yetto- be- created island was a consultation exercise with Ngati Hei and it might be named after that local iwi’s waka, though nothing had been decided.
“Tonight’s celebration will mark the completion of a stage in the waterways which delivers the first man- made island residential community in New Zealand. This creates a unique address,” Hopper said of Endeavour Island.
Former dairy farms were amalgamated in a joint venture between Hopper Developments and the land owners so the 11ha — originally part of the mainland — could be marooned by 1.5km of new canal to give waterfront views and the ability for many people to moor a boat outside their home.
Last Tuesday, the water was released so that for the first time, boaties could navigate from the Whitianga River estuary to the Joan Gaskell Dr bridge towards the heart of the waterways.
Hopper said last decade about half the community were nonpermanent residents who worked elsewhere — often Auckland — but that had changed since about 2008.
“About half our sales had traditionally been to permanent residents. However recent changes in demand are seeing 90 per cent of property owners are permanent residents,” he said.
Hopper said the waterways had been built to cater for climate change potentially raising sea levels.
“Our experts told us we may or may not get half a metre sea level rise in the next 100 years.
“We have built 2m above those levels and we have designed our structures to protect the interface between the canals and the properties,” he said, referring to walls around the canals.
Construction of the waterways started about 17 years ago and would take a further 20 years to complete, he said.
More than 500 sections have already been created across the entire project and when it is finished, it will have about 8km of canals.
Across the canal from the island, Marlin Waters retirement village will be expanded, a new 100- room hotel will be built and a new waterfront retail centre would rise with about 30 properties, Hopper said. Waterways on the Grand Canal are about 60m wide while canals around the i sland are about 50m wide. All the canals are about 2m minimum draft at low tide, he said.
Denis Tegg, a lawyer based in Thames, fears the effects of climate change on Whitianga township and cited the Waikato Re- gional Council’s coastal inundation tool for calculating rising sea levels.
“If you input a 0.8 metre rise, which 2008 Ministry for the Environment guidelines require councils to consider, then a large chunk of Whitianga township goes under water.
“Therefore the question arises as why would you have a subdivision where the town centre is under water?” Tegg asked.