Invercargill's growth areas something of a puzzle looks

Invercargill’s expanding – but how coherently? Michael Fallow for an overview from busy developers.

Would you buy a jigsaw puzzle that came without a big picture on the box to work from?

Just a bagful of pieces that may fit together passably well. Or not. A recreational puzzler may be up for hazarding the time and a little money to find out. Developers tend to value their time, and the money they’re required to stump up with, rather more highly.

Several major development projects are upon the city, each of them of such scale that they have their own large and coherent internal frameworks.

There’s the 70ha Te Puā wai residential subdivision in the southeast; the 500ha Awarua industrial project that Calder Stewart is undertaking, and the city block commercial development that has risen up in the very heart of the central business district.

When Te Puā wai was announced the response was a welcoming one, albeit perhaps accompanied by a ‘‘sheesh’’ at the sheer scale of it – more than 600 sections in Tramway Road and Centre St, flanked by Rockdale Rd and Regent St.

It hasn’t happened yet, but the rezoning for residential development passed smoothly through the consent process and project director Boyd Wilson of Bonisch Consultants is content that the pent-up demand is there.

With smaller, more compact sections around the small commercial hub, and larger more expensive ones further out, the range of properties should appeal to 80% of the market, he says.

The other 20% would have their hearts set on bigger land holdings in north Invercargill.

But that’s where the availability of land is an issue, compounded by Government moves to prevent creep into productive farmland areas, and a lack of clear direction from the city council not having, as many other councils do, an overall development plan for much smaller developments to work to.

Wilson: ‘‘ There’s very little zoned land left for residential purposes in North Invercargill.’’

It’s true that the city’s population has hardly been growing apace. In fact some of the city’s infrastructure has maintained a level of redundancy right through to the stage of needing replacement.

The ICC in its long term plan for growth notes that its existing critical infrastructure and resources were designed for a city with a population larger than we are now. It says the council ‘‘has appropriate infrastructure and resources to service our population without significant financial impact as we have plenty of room to grow’’.

The council pledges to continue monitoring change in population growth and prepare for, and respond to, significant changes. It figures the number of households will increase, but the number of people living in them will decrease slightly as the population ages.

In the industrial realm, the council did identify a need so landbanked at Awarua, where new purchaser Calder Stewart’s planned estate project is nothing if not ambitious in scale.

And commercially, the city block development in which the council is a partner was made possible by the remarkable acquisition of so many titles by the H W Richardson group.

But the issue for Bonisch has been the lack of guidance for residential developers, bearing in mind how rare it is for a single developer to have such a large canvas as Te Puā wai.

When the project was first announced, Wilson said: ‘‘When you look at an aerial photograph of Invercargill, it is the logical piece of the puzzle that is missing.’’

Right now the final layout for the first stage is progressing – but so is the detailed master plan for the entire development, with its eventual, smallish, commercial zone, its recreational parks, reserves and services, an aged care facility.

The puzzle metaphor stacks up usefully within the subdivision itself. Says Wilson: ‘‘We’re basically building the full jigsaw and then pulling it back into pieces, so when we complete it, it all fits back together again.’’

Bonisch has worked on the Inverurie, Ascot Heights and Northwood subdivisions, of which Inverurie, off Retreat Rd, was the only one to claim the status of a masterplanned project, Wilson says. ‘‘Normally in Invercargill we’ve done ad hoc subdivision. (Developers) just put another piece in a puzzle that’s never been solved.’’

Working on the scale of Te Puā wai, rarity that it is, provides affords the confidence for residents that they stand to be part of a community that makes sense – for instance that the quiet little road they buy into, won’t in future mutate into the main road to somewhere else.

More than that, says Bonisch’s engineering team leader Adam Ronald, it keeps down the costs of connection to Invercargill’s civic infrastructure.

‘‘The scale of it has allowed potentially, section prices to remain very cost-effective, spread over the cost of multiple lots rather than a handful.

The firm is pretty happy that the off-site work needed to sync the subdivision into the city’s potable and waste water networks is shaping up to be comparatively straightforward. Ronald: ‘‘We probably thought there would need to be more off-site upgrades than there’s turned out to be.’’

Stormwater management is something the subdivision can handle on-site, with wetland areas in the design. A key neighbour for the project is the nearby Murihiku Marae and iwi have been a participant in the planning from the outset.

The first hui took place without any preconceived ideas about the details of the project; simply to let them know of the development in its earliest, unformed state. ‘‘Once they’d picked themselves off the floor... we began really good constructive dialogue.’’

The influence of Te Puā wai would spread widely into the city’s housing market. Those moving in from other parts of Invercargill perhaps out of the family home and into retirement, freeing up other stock, which might in turn prompt upgrade work.

Another significant proposal is DCL properties seeking consent to subdivide a vacant 29.36ha site at 60 Otatara Rd, plus a 1.233ha portion of adjoining Invercargill Golf Course site, into 31 allotments. It’s on the flight plan for the Invercargill airport, and has drawn objections on that basis.

On the wider national issue of the continual creep of expanding cities into productive farmland Wilson accepts it’s an issue on which the Government needed to act. Depending on the specific circumstances, it needs to stop or it needs to be justified, he says.

To address growth issues, the Government is also steering moves to higher-density, more vertical developments.

For Invercargill? Wilson sees some scope for this around the CBD and Southern Institute of Technology but he cautions that it’s folly to plan without appreciating the Kiwis are mobile beasts not easily to be separated from their cars.

Rules imposed from a central perspective don’t normally work in a regional city, he says. Even with other modes of transport available for weekday needs, it’s folly to fail to appreciate how many New Zealanders will want their own mode of transport, if only for the weekends.

So Invercargill must always plan for parking.

‘‘When you look at an aerial photograph of Invercargill, it is the logical piece of the puzzle that is missing.’’ Boyd Wilson Bonisch Consultants