By Joel Cayford - North Shore City
Councillor
Deputy Chair - Works and Environment
Published NZ Herald - November 1998
North Shore City residents are contributing more and more to developer profits as the opportunities in the Council’s Proposed District Plan are exploited. The fundamental growth assumptions in that plan need to be questioned as the conflict implicit in the North Shore City slogan “The Place to Grow” become evident. It’s time for developer levies to be levied!
North Shore City’s population increased by 19,517 people - 12.8 percent - to 172,164 between 1991 and 1996. Auckland, Manukau and Waitakere City populations increased by similar percentages in that time too. Under a medium growth scenario, North Shore City’s population is anticipated to reach 250,000 in the next 25 years.
The city’s new population has been absorbed into a mix of infill housing - where quarter acre sections are sub-divided and cross-leased - and greenfield development primarily in Albany. North Shore City’s Proposed District Plan anticipates that Greenhithe and Long Bay greenfield sites will also be urbanised, and intends that the new Albany development will become a major Regional Centre competing between Takapuna and Orewa.
Adverse impacts of this growth plan to date include: pressure on a sewage system whose design capacity is exceeded in parts and whose consequent upgrade costs are largely born by ratepayers - not developers; congestion on roads; risks that green spaces will be lost; and the possibility that established North Shore communities will have the economic blood squeezed out of them to force-feed new developments.
The proliferation of retail-led development is an example of what is happening. Retailing in Takapuna’s Hurstmere Road never really recovered from the K-Mart Mall development at Milford in the early 90’s, which itself suffered a reversal of fortunes with the establishment of Target Road and Link Drive “big box - drive in” shopping a couple of years later. And today the economic viability of many Target Road retailers, and others in Brown’s Bay and Northcote, are under enormous pressure from the huge “big box” shopping developments at The Albany Centre.
While shoppers have more apparent choices, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the main short-term beneficiaries of this explosion in retail development are the developers who buy the land, manage the subdivision process, obtain the consents, build, sell, and move on to green pastures.
The seeds of this growing problem go back to 1992 and earlier, as the North Shore growth strategy was developed. A 1992 Survey of Resident Preferences conducted for Council was a critical input. It indicated “there was a general preference to retain existing patterns of housing types in the city and for most growth to be accommodated in ‘greenfield’ areas...” The consultation also suggested there was little support for the sort of intensive development along transport nodes which fosters public transport. At the time the Rodney District Council indicated it was opposed to the North Shore City Council permitting urban growth toward North Shore City’s northern boundary because it would merge residential development with that occurring in Silverdale and Whangapaoroa.
It appears strong pro-development lobbying, and the power-vision of an expanded North Shore City with Albany as its centre of gravity, drove the formation of the present Plan which some have criticised as being a “developer’s charter”. The current Proposed District Plan was notified in October 1994. It was one of the first in New Zealand, and has triggered tens of thousands of submissions, and many Variations since being notified. Optimistic forecasts suggest the Proposed Plan might be fully Operative, and through all its Environment Court hoops, sometime in 2002.
But the signs are strong that the expansive growth assumptions underpinning it should be set aside now in favour of a more careful plan favouring consolidation, respecting the relationship between existing residents and new development, and which is sensitive to the boundaries between North Shore City and other cities and the environment.
The Proposed Plan’s expansive intention was challenged severely by the Auckland Regional Council in 1995 when it drew the Auckland Region Metropolitan Boundary line to exclude the Okura Estuary. The boundary line effectively prevented North Shore City from expanding northward. With its vision under attack, North Shore City Council fought the line in major Environment Court litigation. But the line was upheld.
Urban growth northward was stopped, but growth within the metropolitan boundary has continued strongly. Changing the direction or speed of this development will not be easy, and meanwhile growth already in place and underway puts increasing pressure on water supply and sewage infrastructure, not forgetting ratepayers’ pockets. This is unfair because it is not the user who pays. Until the Proposed Plan is operative North Shore City Council cannot extract a developer’s levy to pay for water and waste-water infrastructure built to service new subdivisions. While the developer may contribute some of this cost in various ways, it is a fact that a proportion of all ratepayer rates pay for infrastructure they will never use. Indeed established ratepayers will usually pay a substantial contribution to increase the size of a local sewer pipe trunk main - even though the increase is to serve distant developments and infill housing.
While I uphold the principle that everybody should contribute to the common good of a sewage network, just as they do to road and water networks - when high intensity development occurs, the costs need to be levied more appropriately.
In my opinion there is clearly a need to enable development levies to be charged, where the relevant Plan is effective but not “operative”. I am advised this requires a small law change.
Other changes are happening now. For example in January this year North Shore City Council pressed Auckland Regional Council to honour its published policy and expand Long Bay Regional Park by buying land at Long Bay which North Shore City’s Proposed District Plan labels: “future residential”.
However the expansionist vision of an Albany Regional Centre functioning as the North Shore Civic Centre lingers. Pressure and ideas to make that particular vision come true include establishing new Court buildings there, and building the replacement North Shore Police Station there. Further, it has been suggested the whole North Shore City Council could relocate to Albany alongside a vast WaterWorld facility. These are the kinds of desperate measures that might promote growth at Albany. But they would certainly reduce the viability of the Takapuna economic community. By themselves these sorts of measures cannot guarantee the Albany Regional Centre would thrive in any case.
Communities that are attractive to live and work in, tend to grow gradually over decades. Sensitive planning can assist this process. But dragging resources from ratepayers and communities to artificially build other communities - and to excessively support short-term developer-led projects - seems inappropriate today.
North Shore City has been through a period of planned explosive growth and development. Now is the time to plan for consolidation and care, for the long term.