An Aucklander who started a petition against a development in his neighbourhood says his community is outraged at the plans, but the developer says everything about the mid-rise building falls within the law and the petitioners should be ignored.
Ockham Residential is in the consenting stage to build a seven-storey apartment block with 40 units right next to Meadowbank train station.
Simon Cope, a Meadowbank resident who owns a home adjacent to the proposed site, has started a petition to make council put the development through public notification, a process that allows for community consultation when developments could have significant effects on the environment or people living in the area.
Cope, who has lived in the area for over 20 years, told Newshub Meadowbank is a "wide mix" of older people, social housing tenants, and private homeowners, who were "in shock" at the news of Ockham's development.
He said big impacts will come in the form of a strain on infrastructure, shadows across nearby homes, and no parking.
The plot of land was originally going to have three homes built on it, but the owners had to sell to Ockham for financial reasons.
Cope said he and his family "were nearly in palpitations" when they found out the development was happening.
The 40-unit development will be built just a few metres from the edge of Cope's own home, and he said, "the key thing for us was that there was no public notification process".
Mark Todd, the co-founder and Development Manager of Ockham, told Newshub the petition is from "an older wealth generation and they need to be ignored, primarily because their objections have no standing in policy or law".
Todd said the development plans fall within the law and are exactly what Auckland needs to be building more of.
"There's public investment to the tune of billions of dollars going into the rail network. There's an Auckland Unitary Plan that has at its heart a quality compact city and I'm building a seven-storey building literally five-metres from the train station overbridge."
"On top of that, it's fully aligned with the National Policy Statement on Housing and Urban Development that requires a minimum of six storeys within a walkable catchment."
Auckland's 'Plan Change 78: Intensification', specifies the council must "enable more development in the city centre and at least six-storey buildings within walkable catchments from the edge of the city centre, metropolitan centres and rapid transit stops".
Scott Caldwell, a spokesperson for the Coalition for More Homes, told Newshub "public notification under the RMA is actually quite a massive step".
"It's not just telling people; it's going through quite a rigorous process that typically draws out these kinds of things by years."
Caldwell also said the price of public notification can often make developments "non-economic".
Cope has talked with the council and said they are currently considering whether to begin a public notification process for the development.
Cope said, "this idea of limited notification needs to change especially where we are going to make a potentially big impact on an area".
Todd said, "I'm sick of realpolitik getting involved with progressive companies doing the right thing".
"The City Council places too much weight on fear and political backlash rather than the legal weight of these objections because the legal weight of the objections and the requests for full public notification are virtually zero.
"The council should disregard them rather than attend to petitions, I believe, from wealthy connected groups," Todd said.
Cope posted the petition on Neighbourly to raise awareness, and in the post said, "this project is more than just bricks and mortar; it represents the potential loss of our shared history, our sense of community, and the friendly, familiar environment we cherish.
"Imagine the children's laughter replaced by traffic noise, the friendly faces replaced by strangers, and the sunlight replaced by the imposing shadow of a concrete giant".
Questioned about the emotive language, particularly around friendly faces being replaced by strangers, he said "I think that may be artistic licence. I wouldn't put any weight on that whatsoever".
However, he does fear that Ockham's development, and developments of its sort, will lead to people leaving the area.
He said, "there will be some that will leave, but it's a complicated answer".
"It's not because the people that move in there will be strangers, the reason they're starting to move is because they're scared of the unknown."
He said that, because of the lack of public notification, homeowners are concerned about surprise developments and in efforts to avoid them impacting their properties, they are moving.
"People are like, 'Could this happen to me?'" Cope said.
Caldwell said that the use of such loaded language in this conversation "dehumanises the fact that these are houses that people are going to live in".
He takes "quite a bit of offence to that kind of language".
Todd said, "the language speaks for itself".
Cope argued that the price point for the mid-rise units will be unaffordable for those worst impacted by the housing crisis.
Todd estimated the units will sell for between $700,000 and $2 million.
"We need to accept that some of those units are going to be targeted towards people who have a bit more money, but that means that people are moving out of another home and freeing that up elsewhere in the city," Caldwell said.
Potential impacts
Cope is concerned the already limited parking around the train station will become a critical problem.
Ockham's plans outline that the new development would have 40 units, but only 18 car parks.
"There is NO provision for the fact that the average household has 2 vehicles. Where will the other 60+ cars go?" the petition reads.
However, Caldwell said high-density housing doesn't induce population growth and said, because of the site's proximity to the train station, "it's really hard to point to a better site than this one".
Todd said, "public streets are not private car parking. You can't privatise public street responsibilities".
Auckland's Unitary Plan does not require car parking, and Todd emphasised that "we've had a democratic process" to decide on the plan.
He added that, if car parks were required in zones like Meadowbank, developers would just "build three townhouses that are worth $3 million each and then Ōrākei and Meadowbank will continue being exclusive baby-boomer suburbs".
He also thought adding car parks would undermine Auckland's public transport strategy.
Caldwell said he appreciates the strain on parking might be disruptive, "but the alternative is that we have an extremely unaffordable city".
The median sales price of an Auckland home as of November was $1,052,000, up from $627,000 ten years earlier.
Cope also warns the local infrastructure is already struggling, and the mid-rise will make things even worse.
"We've got a poo pump station which has been known to overload," he said.
The petition also claims the rubbish collection is already "under huge strain".
Caldwell accepted "infrastructure and housing really needs to be aligned," but again emphasised just how advantageous it would be having the development right next to the train station.
Another issue is the buildings shadow profile, and Cope claims "the houses with stars will be shaded between 100 percent and 50 percent year-round".
Asked about how he arrived at these figures, he admitted, "it's a vague statement to a point, but they have given us shading details".
Cope's home will be one of the worst impacted by the development's shadow, and he said that it will completely undermine his home's near zero energy bill.
"The council, the Government, the Green Party encourage us to use solar, to be more energy efficient and then it's completely undermined by this," he said.
Todd accepted Cope's house would be shaded by the development from the northern sun, but claimed Cope's house was worth more than it was three years ago because of the policy change that was allowing the development to happen.
It remains to be seen whether Auckland Council will force Ockham to go through a public notification process for the mid-rise.
Todd said, "City Council needs to restructure and get more progressive people in senior roles that are more in line with implementing the law and what the Unitary Plan says than protecting their ass from political fallout from voter issues".
He thinks that, because the City Council responds to requests like Cope's, petitions keep arising that are "just rich older people trying to have it their way".
Cope said he supports increased density, but that this is a poorly thought-out spot for a mid-rise.
"I don't this is the solution to the housing crisis, all this is doing is potentially freeing up houses that would be sold elsewhere," Cope said.
He also thought New Zealand must be careful "we don't slingshot the other way with the volume and end up like we've done before with a temporary overabundance of housing".
Cope said the response to the petition has been "really positive" and on Tuesday it had over 370 signatures.
