Despite a similar, but less intensive development proposal for the Gables pub site being turned down by the Environment Court in 2007, a new proposal with 69 apartments and two commercial areas has received the go-ahead by the Government as an SHA (Special Housing Area).
Judge McElrea concluded, “In this location it seems out of place with considerable detrimental effects.”
So why on earth does Manson Construction Company, which has bought the site, think the new proposal will work with 69 apartments, two commercial areas, six storeys where only four are permitted, considerable loss of sunlight to adjoining character residential homes, removal of street parking, no parking for visitors, no acknowledgement of heritage surroundings and, worst of all, significantly more raw sewage flowing into an already polluted harbour. The answer is in three letters - SHA.
The Waitemata Local Board unanimously opposed the new proposal, while the Auckland Council Committee approved it by one vote. It went to the then Housing Minister, Nick Smith, who approved it.
Like a majority of Aucklanders, I support intensification of population inside the current city boundaries. We do not want unlimited urban sprawl covering good farmland with tarseal and concrete, making infrastructure development difficult and costly.
But the Government has gone berserk, approving 154 SHAs in the Auckland region, and thousands of Aucklanders are in danger of losing treasured amenities they value like trees, sun, with new traffic and parking problems, breaching of peace and quiet. This is not nimbyism. It’s about a sense of community and what we like about where we live.
As our Councillor, Mike Lee, said in a recent press release, “SHAs are Nick Smith’s brain child. The intensive housing developments have their approvals fast tracked, mainly by suspending the normal rights for affected members of the public to comment on the applications. Suspending Aucklanders’ civil and even property rights was considered necessary by Nick Smith to help solve the housing crisis, a crisis which former Prime Minister John Key, Minister Simon Bridges and other cabinet ministers have denied exists.
Lee wrote a firm but polite letter to Nick Smith, calling for the SHA delegation to be removed from the Gables site. He received a vitriolic reply from Smith calling Lee a “nimby” and a "hypocrite”.
However, Lee’s letter to Smith was largely about inadequate infrastructure, in particular the environmental effects of raw sewage overflowing into the Waitemata Harbour on a more or less weekly basis.
Councillor Lee, a mild-mannered man of principle, was hugely offended by Smith’s allegations, and has gone on to call the process a “corruption of civic law and process”. It’s also a smack in the face for our very efficient and hard-working local board.”
The main hope of locals is that Watercare will step up and speak out on the obscene idea that more raw sewage should be allowed to flow into our harbour. As Mike Lee also said, “It is primitive in the extreme to allow further pollution of our harbour.” Watercare has a long-term aim to build a central interceptor to take sewage underground to Mangere. The billion and a half dollars or so it will cost is just not available right now.
The New Zealand Herald of Saurday 21 January featured a double page spread by journalist Simon Collins, outlining the problem of raw sewage flowing into the Waitemata Harbour, with among the worst outflows at Coxs Bay where the effluent from the proposed new 69-apartment complex would flow. As Watercare concedes, “each extra home will add to the baseload of sewage in the combined pipes.”
Ponsonby News spoke with Kim Walker and Kate Stanton who live opposite the Gables on Kelmarna Avenue. As well as the critical issue of sewage disposal, they cited bad shading on Kelmarna and loss of sun, increased traffic and noise, parking problems, potential social issues of integration if the SHA has a requirement to supply 10% of affordable apartments. They will be shoe boxes, Walker and Stanton declared, but still cost five or six hundred thousand dollars. “The proposed development is out of scale-out of proportion for the site.”
There will be a huge local uproar when people find out they have no right to oppose the development. Back to Mike Lee. He said the century-old combined wastewater and sewage system which drains into Cox’s Bay, overflowed 62 times in the year to last June. “We are talking about the sparkling Waitemata,” he told the Herald. “At the same time we are promoting the pollution of the harbour with human wastes.”
Therefore, maintains Lee, the development does not meet the “adequate infrastructure” provision in the Housing Accords and Special Housing Act.
Opposed locals, including Walker and Stanton, are calling for “reasonable development in our area,” in sympathy with the environment it sits in. They remind readers that the powerful Environment Court has already turned down a less intrusive development.
The Waitemata Local Board, in its opposition statement concluded that “This SHA application is substantially similar to the rejected 2007 proposal although with 30% greater height, which would require zoning changes under the Proposed Auckland Unitary Plan. There is a proven record of considerable community opposition to further development of the site that would be thwarted by the SHA process.”
That just doesn’t seem fair or right. (JOHN ELLIOTT)
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