Lismore St residents have been unable to convince the council new building height rules could change the character of their corner of Wānaka.
As the Queenstown Lakes District Council seeks to allow for more height and density in parts of the district to enable “urban intensification”, residents told a hearings panel earlier this year allowing homes to reach 12m heights would provide multimillion-dollar views for some without addressing the need for more houses in the district.
Sir Ian Taylor, who was among those opposed to the changes, set up 12m poles at his Lismore St holiday home as a visual aid and said the new rules would allow views to be obstructed without adding a single bed to help keep up with the area’s growth.
“It blocks out mountain views and it changes what Wānaka is,” Sir Ian said at the time.
“Because if I can do that on my house, every household on the top of that rise will be able to do it as well.”
The urban intensification variation proposal being investigated by the council involves increasing the existing Wānaka town centre building heights from 12m to 16.5m and the adjoining medium-density zone from 7m to 12m.
The council’s reply evidence addressed Lismore St directly.
“A number of submitters have sought that a character constraint be applied to Wānaka in the vicinity of Lismore St, so as to justify a further reduction in building heights,” the council’s legal counsel said.
“The council’s position is unchanged from its opening legal submissions in that Wānaka is not subject to such constraint … that would warrant any further reduction in building height from what was notified.”
However, a council planner did put forward several variations for Wānaka’s town centre development, including ensuring building designs fit in with the surrounding neighbourhood, applying principles of “crime prevention through environmental design” to enhance public space and ensuring development is “of a human scale, that avoids large-scale monolithic building forms”.
The updated vision for new development in the town centre would allow for buildings between 16.5m and 20m heights when there was “high-quality design” and when the added height would not throw shade on residences or public space, or “dominate the streetscape”.
Another contentious aspect of the council’s proposed urban intensification variation is Arrowtown, where residents also fear 12m-high buildings may harm the township’s character.
After weighing up a variety of options to meet submitters’ concerns, the council planner remained unmoved from her original position.
In general, the urban intensification variation is aimed at amending the proposed district plan by increasing heights and densities in residential and business zones close to the commercial centres in Queenstown, Arrowtown, Frankton and Wānaka to enable intensification of development.
It follows a government mandate — policy 5 of the National Policy Statement for Urban Development — that urban centres must zone for denser, more affordable housing.
A council spokesman yesterday said the independent hearing panel was at present writing up its recommendations report, which was expected to be completed before Christmas.
Once council staff had received this report, it would be presented at the first possible full council meeting in the new year for consideration, the spokesman said.
— Allied Media