Asked what he loves about Dominion Rd, Epsom-bred developer John Dalzell names Omni yakitori bar, whose owners John Yip and Jamie Yeon have returned from Hong Kong to fire up local imaginations.
Brent Murdoch, a local resident and construction boss who helped found the Eden We Love pressure group opposing a new supermarket development, cites the chorizo and pinto beans tapas at nearby Spanish restaurant Tasca. And Barilla Dumpling House, of course, for Friday night takeaways when you can’t be bothered to cook.
They talk about the place, they talk about the retail, they talk about the food. But more than that, it’s the people. This is Dominion Rd – it’s a vibrant, diverse microcosm of this country. It is New Zealand, tomorrow.
That’s why the application this month to fast-track a big New World supermarket integrated into a block of small retail, shared offices and 122 apartments is important. This is thought to be the first contemporary development integrating large-scale retail and housing.
The developers describe Dominion Rd as one of Auckland’s most famous shopping strips, an eclectic mix of 200-odd ethnic restaurants, banks, antique shops and charity stores, but they warn that the normally bustling stretch is showing signs of stress with sale and for lease signs filling many windows. “Surviving through lockdowns and beyond into an uncertain period is going to be very challenging for a number of these businesses,” the application says.
So locals, one might think, should welcome 250-300 new residents, as well as the patronage of the occupants of the 17,000 households in the supermarket’s wider catchment.
“In this rabidly pro-development environment we’re in, no one cares about the breaches of the unitary plan.”
– Brent Murdoch, Eden We Love Inc
This is the first big urban housing development to enter the Government’s Covid-era fast-track process, that will take consenting out of the hands of council commissioners and give responsibility to an independent panel administered by the Environmental Protection Authority in Wellington. It is forecast to bring forward the project’s completion by six to nine months.
That panel may, or may not, agree to formally hear the voices of the local community. It may decide that developer John Dalzell and supermarket chain Foodstuffs North Island have done enough to consult them and, now, it’s time to push on and break ground.
The new panel to consider the application was appointed on May 17. It is chaired by environmental and resource management lawyer Bronwyn Carruthers, who is joined by experienced planning commissioners Robert Scott and Maxine Moana-Tuwhangai.
Last week, they visited the site at 360 Dominion Rd. And, in a sign that should encourage the local community, their first action was to extend the list of local residents and businesses who will be invited to comment: they added a GAS petrol station whose business might be affected by changes to the intersection; the body corporate of the adjoining retail block; and the Eden We Love incorporated society, made up of residents of Grange Rd and Prospect Tce.
“This recently-formed society has engaged with the applicant during the pre-application process,” Carruthers says. “Its position is not clear from the material filed with the application and its primary purpose is to help people understand, value, care for and enjoy the local Mt Eden environment.”
This extension of who is invited to comment is important because it goes to the heart of the question: when New Zealand has decided to set in place new processes to break down the roadblocks to new housing development, will the community still be heard? What weight will that voice carry?
What is clear is that relations have become strained between the developers and the residents’ group. Dalzell insists he’s not being patronising when he says they simply don’t understand the traffic plans.
“That’s Mr Dalzell to a T,” Brent Murdoch retorts. “It is one-way traffic to him. He’s allowed to be passionate about his development but if the residents show any passion, that’s unwanted emotion in his view.”
“There is no requirement under the Act to hold a hearing. However if a panel decides to hold a hearing, it has discretion to determine who may be heard.”
– Environmental Protection Authority
Murdoch believed the government had sacrificed all caution and care for the local environment on an altar of expediency. The six-storey building would be 23 metres tall, he said, well above the unitary plan limit of about 18 metres.
The first four storeys wouldn’t be set back from the street, across from his home on Grange Rd. The traffic crossings, over the pavements, would be far wider than is usually permitted – the truck and car service lanes combined would be 13 metres wide. The plan failed to adequately separate cars and trucks from cyclists and pedestrians on the side streets, he said.
Murdoch was worried about this brave new world. “In this rabidly pro-development environment we’re in, no one cares about the breaches of the unitary plan.”
An Environmental Protection Authority spokesperson said the Covid-19 Recovery (Fast-track Consenting) Act 2020 did not provide for public or limited notification, but it did require the expert consenting panel to invite comments from some people or groups.
For the Dominion Rd mixed-use development this included Auckland Council, relevant iwi authorities, landowners and occupiers of the project land and adjacent land, relevant ministers and a number of specified agencies and groups including the Environmental Defence Society, Forest & Bird, and Infrastructure NZ.
The order for this project also specified Watercare, Auckland Transport and Dominion Road Business Association be invited to comment.
“In the context of villas selling for $3 to $4 million next door, our entry point is not ‘KiwiBuild level’ but we’ve got product that will start just over $800,000.”
– John Dalzell, developer
Letters were sent out last week. Community members have until June 16 to provide comments to the panel.
After that, the panel’s decision on the application must be made within 25 working days, unless it is extended in limited circumstances. This means a decision should be made by July 20 but no later than August 24.
“There is no requirement under the Act to hold a hearing,” the spokesperson said. “However if a panel decides to hold a hearing, it has discretion to determine who may be heard. A hearing does not alter the decision-making timeframes.”
In a further reassuring sign, the independent panel is publishing extensive documentation on the Environmental Protection Authority website. Forty-five applications, plans, assessments, orders, reports, memos and minutes thus far … and counting.
Amid all the fine detail that will no doubt occupy much of the panel’s time are three bigger questions: What is the tipping point between local community voice and wider public good? When we are battling a supply crisis, is all housing good housing? And how do we balance the urgency of addressing that housing crisis with the restraint needed to manage emissions?
Local voice v national interest
Despite having a major arterial route cutting through it – and plans for light rail – this is still very much a residential neighbourhood. Across Dominion Rd is a Girl Guides’ Hall, where children meet on Monday and Thursday evenings. There’s an elegant old retirement home, Claire House, immediately across Prospect Terrace. There’s a funeral home that is busy whenever there’s a funeral.
And the kids of one family in the Eden We Love group have always walked through the carpark at the back of 360 Dominion Rd to get to and from school each day. So it’s easy to have some sympathy for the local community.
But the question of the power of the community voice is particularly vexing here – because this is also just a few blocks from New Zealand’s most notorious residents’ group, the Eden Park Neighbours’ Association whose members have successfully stymied concerts and other additional and night events at Auckland’s biggest stadium for years.
It would not be inaccurate to say that the Neighbours’ Association has become synonymous with NIMBYism in New Zealand – Not In My Back Yard.
So the question of what muscle the local residents association should wield is to the fore. How much power should they have to influence a development that, clearly, may both provide an important amenity and help address one of the biggest infrastructure crises facing New Zealand today?
In Dalzell’s view, there comes a point when community interests must be subsumed by the greater public good. “This development is providing many different public benefits, and we’ve listed those,” he said.
Murdoch says he’s not aware of any overlap between the Eden Park Neighbours’ Association and his group, Eden We Love Inc. He’s not disclosing the Eden We Love membership except to say that it meets and exceeds the requisite 15 members to set up an incorporated society.
(And that by odd coincidence, four of the members from Prospect Tce are architects – who have been able to draft a detailed response to the consultation documents submitted by Foodstuffs and Dalzell’s company, Silk Road Management).
“It’s a denial of natural justice, if we’re not entitled to have a hearing. It’s at the discretion of the panel. It’s anti-democratic, and outrageous.”
– Brent Murdoch, Eden We Love
What he does say is that this is not NIMBYism. Everyone in the group recognises the urgent need for residential intensification – they support the development of multi-level apartments. They just don’t think Dominion Rd needs a third supermarket within 250 metres, congesting the roads.
That’s right: there is already a big Countdown, and a smaller Farro Fresh, within two blocks of this new New World. Foodstuffs may feel it lacks a supermarket in the Dominion Rd/Mt Eden area, but the residents don’t feel that way. They worry the little Farro, in particular, could be forced out.
So when Carruthers said last week that Eden We Love’s position was not clear from the material filed with the application, Murdoch is happy to provide that clarity.
“The position of Eden We Love is that we accept the development of the apartments,” Murdoch said. “But we’re opposed to a large New World supermarket. We think it’s an unsuitable and unsafe site, and the traffic is effectively unmanageable.”
Is all housing good housing?
Addressing the housing crisis may seem integral to the Government’s infrastructure plans – but the Covid-19 Recovery (Fast-track Consenting) Act’s statement of purpose makes no mention of housing.
“The purpose of this Act is to urgently promote employment growth to support New Zealand’s recovery from the economic and social impacts of Covid-19 and to support the certainty of ongoing investment across New Zealand,” it says, “while continuing to promote the sustainable management of natural and physical resources.”
So for instance, Dalzell and Foodstuffs argued that the project would create 100 to 220 full-time equivalent jobs in its construction, another 130 to 150 permanent full-time equivalent jobs in the New World supermarket on the site, and perhaps 35 more in associated trade and retail.
The importance of infrastructure spending in addressing the housing crisis is not entirely forgotten, though. The Act’s fine print does cite “increasing housing supply” as one of the nine examples of how a project might be adjudged to result in a public benefit.
The question is whether this entails providing new supply at a lower entry point, to help people who couldn’t otherwise afford a home.
In their assessment of whether the project achieves the Act’s purpose, the developers deal with affordable housing in a perfunctory manner. “In this location typical villas and bungalows are selling for $2,500,000 and over $3,000,000,” it says. “The development provides a viable alternative for those first home buyers who cannot afford or desire this type of investment.”
“We’re focused on 25-to-35-year-olds who are struggling at the moment to get on the housing ladder.”
– John Dalzell, Silk Road Management
Dalzell said this week that there were no plans for low-cost housing. Studio apartments would start at about $850,000; two-bedroom apartments would be $1.5 to $1.6 million. “I describe it as market affordable. In the context of villas selling for $3 to $4 million next door, our entry point is not ‘KiwiBuild level’ but we’ve got product that will start just over $800,000.
“We’re very focused towards that younger first-home buyer, but also people that need convenience next to public transport.”
He acknowledged that an older generation would be taken aback at $800,000 for a one-room studio apartment. “But that’s not who we’re focused on. We’re focused on 25-to-35-year-olds who are struggling at the moment to get on the housing ladder.”
Could this provide them a foot on the ladder? “Absolutely.”
At New World owner Foodstuffs, which is working with Silk Road Management to develop the property, Lindsay Rowles deferred to Dalzell on the question of affordable housing.
A developer would expect a market price when the apartments were sold, he said. “We’re a supermarket owner.”
Developing a low emissions future
Lindsay Rowles is the general manager for property at Foodstuffs North Island. To give an idea of the scale of his job, we met at the co-op’s new headquarters near Auckland International Airport in Mangere. There, as well as a sleek glass-fronted office building, they have also built a distribution warehouse the size of eight rugby fields. It was the biggest such warehouse in the country, he said.
Outside, a dozen big red and yellow New World truck-and-trailers are lined up. In the carpark are rows and rows of near-identical Mitsubishi Outlander SUVs, the company vehicles sparkling in the light rain. (The company emphasises that it aims for 30 percent of its car fleet to be EVs by 2023).
With respect, this does not seem to be a company that has entirely embraced a low emissions future.
On Dominion Rd, the new mixed retail/residential development will have 277 carparks – nearly 60 more than the present retail and commercial tenants. There will be as many carparks at this new supermarket as there would have been if Foodstuffs built it 10 years ago, or 20 years ago, Rowles said. A changing environmental climate had not led to changes in the numbers of carparks they put in.
It’s odd, because reducing climate emissions is a genuinely big priority in the fast-tracking legislation – far more so than housing supply. Four of the nine examples of how a project might be adjudged to result in a public benefit are environmental imperatives, specifically climate imperatives.
And if a project has significant adverse environmental impacts, specifically increasing greenhouse gas emissions, then the minister is required to rule that it doesn’t meet the requirements for fast-tracking.
“If one day a tram pulls up out the front and customers can get on and off that, from their place of employment, get their groceries and go to their apartments, that’s utopia, right?”
– Lindsay Rowles, Foodstuffs
So the developers’ application to the the expert panel spells out in detail the lengths they will go to in implementing a comprehensive Environmental Management Plan to reduce CO2 emissions during construction. Construction workers will car-pool or get mini-buses from the train station. Building materials will be locally-sourced.
Foodstuffs, too, is a member of the Climate Leaders Coalition and in the application papers it talks proudly of its low carbon strategy. It’s operating 29 zero emission electric delivery vans, introducing three electric trucks, and installing one of the country’s largest solar panel arrays on its big new head office and distribution centre in Mangere.
Yet that all belies the fact that it is building a big new supermarket entirely designed around private cars and delivery vans. Two hundred and seventy seven carparks in the new complex, some for residents but most for shoppers. Delivery vans coming and going all day. Click-and-collect encouraging quick turnaround traffic movements.
For the residents, it’s the prospect of the traffic that’s alarming – but for the wider community, it begs the question of just how committed Foodstuffs is to its boasts of reducing emissions.
Rowles said supermarkets were long-term assets; this new store should be around for 35-plus years. He acknowledged the store, as it was being built, assumed people would continue to drive their cars to do the shopping – but he said that might eventually change.
“You build for now in a way that doesn’t preclude the future. A built form can change over time. If over time cars became considerably less used in the context of grocery retail, then you can use the built form for other things. You can make the footprint of the supermarket larger, you can put other retail in there, you can put restaurants in there.
“When public transport comes through – whether that’s a five-year, 10-year horizon, if ever – then the street has a chance to reinvent itself.”
Light rail would be a “value-add”, he said. “In the first instance there’s more than enough population there to get to and from the property. It has the right retail convenience and amenity. If one day a tram pulls up out the front and customers can get on and off that, from their place of employment, get their groceries and go to their apartments, that’s utopia, right?”
Should there be a public hearing?
It is up to the independent panel whether it calls a public hearing. If it does, the hearing must be completed within the same designated fast-track time-frames. That seems almost impossible at this point – but time will tell. The only indication from Carruthers and the panel about their interest in hearing from the community, is in their immediate decision to invite more neighbours to have a say.
Dalzell didn’t think a hearing was necessary, and hoped the panel would agree. “One of the great advantages of this process is, you can see the amount and quality of work that’s gone into this. So it’s up to the expert panel – if they feel they can do it on the papers.
“I think we’ve done what we’ve been asked to do and the information is all there to do it on the papers.”
He believed it was enough that his company had consulted with the community; the panel did not then need to hear their voices independently.
“And our consultation and engagement will continue, right through construction. Those are the principles of engagement that I believe in and I think are important.”
Dalzell was speaking from the sideline of his 10-year-old son’s football game. “I’m available at all times and to anyone – within reason, obviously.”
Murdoch was unconvinced. “I think the whole fast-track process is unreasonable for residents,” he said.
“It’s designed for infrastructure projects, that don’t impact on residential concerns. The time scales are ridiculous. We were notified and given less than three weeks to respond – it’s a denial of natural justice, if we’re not entitled to have a hearing. It’s at the discretion of the panel. It’s anti-democratic, and outrageous.”
