Page 798 - Week 02 - Thursday, 23 February 2012
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We then talked about the other well-worn track that starts in Austin Street near Wells Gardens and proceeds to Manuka being landscaped and improved to make it better accessible to the public. This, again, would increase the area of public realm and improve the area of public realm. This, I think, together with the other path, would make a substantive improvement in the area around there, which is particularly important because if there is any residential development there, then there will be people living right next to these two existing dirt paths. With the extra use they are likely to have, improving them would be good and it would be good for the residents nearby.
Recommendation 1(d) refers to up-to-date flood warning signs, particularly because, if a development does proceed, the areas that flood will probably change a bit. So that makes sense.
Then we talked about it being important that any development or associated construction work not encroach under the land and the existing stands of trees, and that was for a number of reasons. One is that we do not really want any flooding by building basements under there. The other is that we actually want to make sure that all the regulated and perimeter trees are retained. We had a bit of discussion about how to best describe this. There is a concept map of trees, and basically we are saying we believe that all the trees that the draft territory plan variation is talking about being retained should be retained.
We also felt that any residential development should not have more than one level of basement car parking. As I said, we are concerned about the flood issues, and that seemed a sensible precaution. And of course, any residential development should adhere to universal design.
It is my belief that by defining some of this site as public realm, it would mean that this was area that was not developable. Presumably when using the plot ratio, the gross floor area that can be developed on that site will be lower because what our recommendations effectively do is reduce the developable area of the site. So a combination of the reduction of the area and only allowing one level of basement parking, I think, will mean that the number of apartments or dwellings that are developed on this site, if and when it is developed, will be less than the numbers that have been bandied about in the press in the past.
Moving on with the recommendations, recommendation 2 talks about the need to look more at flood studies. The committee was quite impressed with the evidence about the flood issues there, and the last thing we want to do is make flooding worse. So that is what recommendation 2 is about.
Recommendation 3 says that if it turns out that the draft territory plan variation does not happen and something else is built on block 42 section 15, which could be a hotel, as has already been proposed, the things that we have talked about in recommendation 1 should all be required of any new development because these requirements do not really relate to whether it is residential or what. It could be an office building there. We would have the same sorts of requirements.
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