The Arlington Apartments site located between Hankey, Hopper and Arlington Streets in Mount Cook, Wellington, which covers 1.77 ha. Photo \/ Mark Mitchell <\/p>\n
K\u0101inga Ora said in 2024 it expected work to restart once plans had been finalised and resource consent requirements met. <\/p>\n
Instead, no construction has resumed and, despite $50.2m being spent on the project by March this year according to Bishop\u2019s office, the site remains little more than steel foundations.<\/p>\n
The Herald learned in April that Bishop had scheduled an announcement on progress for the development at the site on April 23, but that announcement never went ahead.<\/p>\n
Mt Cook Residents Association chairman Peter Cooke said he had heard nothing of a planned announcement, and said progress had slowed on the development.<\/p>\n
Chris Goldsbury, director of construction firm Aoraki, which had been contracted to work on the Arlington site, told the Herald he had not heard from Ka\u0304inga Ora \u201cin some time\u201d on its plans for the site, but knew the agency had \u201cwatered down how much was going to be built on the site\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s been no, from our perspective, no meaningful progression at all\u201d, Goldsbury said.<\/p>\n
K\u0101inga Ora would not address questions about the status of the development, including how much had been spent on it, and whether it had gone to the agency\u2019s board.<\/p>\n
Asked why the planned announcement never went ahead, Bishop said \u201cgood progress has been made on Arlington but requires the council to vary their lease agreement with K\u0101inga Ora.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the state-housing agency has a legal obligation to the council to deliver 300 social houses on the site, but that is no longer economically viable.<\/p>\n
\u201cKO has new plans for the site but they cannot proceed without the council varying the lease.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDiscussions are underway and I hope to be able to say more very soon,\u201d Bishop said.<\/p>\n
He said the project was first delayed in July 2023 under the previous Labour government.<\/p>\n
Asked when it would vary the lease, a council spokesman said they were \u201ccurrently engaging with MCERT (the new Ministry for Cities, Environment, Regions and Transport) to negotiate a feasible outcome for the redevelopment of the Arlington site\u201d.<\/p>\n
Wellington Mayor Andrew Little said in June that council officers had been engaging with K\u0101inga Ora, \u201cbut we are still waiting for the Government to announce their intentions for Arlington\u201d.<\/p>\n
Little said a \u201cmore modest\u201d development had been signalled, and the council was considering how to make up the difference in the number of dwellings if it were to be dramatically scaled back.<\/p>\n
In response to Bishop\u2019s comments, Cooke said the community was \u201cfrustrated\u201d with the delays.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe clearly feel that with the housing crisis as it is, that the Government should get on with building where they have a site,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Ethan Manera<\/a> is a Wellington-based journalist covering Wellington issues, local politics and business in the capital. He can be emailed at ethan.manera@nzme.co.nz<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After costs blew out in 2023, Arlington was among a number of K\u0101inga Ora developments paused after a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":528035,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[260866,86207,74,16874,1863,5195,20217,260865,170,244610,266,3339,23543,19136,2250,111,43,139,69,6029,104687,2170,3263,117812,1517,98226,1072,12633,89272,61,212625,192534,52,15900,2963],"class_list":["post-528034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-300home","tag-50m","tag-after","tag-arlington","tag-back","tag-be","tag-bishop","tag-concluded","tag-development","tag-economically","tag-government","tag-housing","tag-kinga","tag-largest","tag-longer","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-once","tag-oras","tag-plan","tag-project","tag-promised","tag-reveals","tag-scaled","tag-social","tag-spent","tag-stalled","tag-to","tag-touted","tag-viable","tag-wellington","tag-wellingtons","tag-zealands"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=528034"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528034\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/528035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=528034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=528034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=528034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}