Andy Foster — Your City Councillor

ONSLOW-WESTERN

Dominion Post Article

By Cr Andy Foster – Wellington City Council’s Urban Development and Transport Portfolio Leader

 

If the lobby group Rongotai Revived is to be believed, Wellington faces a shopping crisis based on the City Council’s desire to turn a section of land near the Airport into an industrial wasteland.

Not surprisingly the City Council is eager to pick apart this myth - which has been aggressively cultivated by Rongotai Revived in the past couple of months.

We have just completed an extensive consultation process on a draft amendment to the District Plan. This crux of the proposed change is based on the fact that we currently have one planning zone and one set of rules that cover all of the city’s ‘commercial’ areas – including town centres, industrial areas, small neighbourhood shopping areas – and this is no longer works properly.

All of these areas have quite different ‘character’ and different needs - and we want to better manage them.

In the case of Rongotai, we propose that this should continue to be an area with mixed uses, including light industrial, service uses such as motels and some retail uses, particularly ‘big-box’ stores.

One thing the Council is, however, clear on is we don’t want to see Rongotai area develop into another ‘town centre’. The Kilbirnie town centre is within walking distance, and the Council has invested much public money to serve the eastern and southern suburbs such as the Regional Aquatic Centre, community centre, library and Council housing.

These facilities work because they are in and around a town centre that has a strong retail core (supermarkets and high-street stores) and are easy to get to via public transport, walking, and car. Long-standing international precedent shows that if we create another competing town centre in Rongotai, we are likely to undermine the viability of the Kilbirnie and Miramar town centres.

This is why we are proposing to carefully consider any proposals for ‘town centre uses’ like supermarkets and department stores in Rongotai.

While Rongotai Revived have run a very effective PR campaign in the past couple of months – it is worth just querying some of their more blatant assertions.

The first is that Rongotai is the Council’s preferred location for ‘noxious’ activities like abattoirs and quarries. This is just not true. It is clearly not suitable for these types of uses and there are no proposed changes to the rules in this regard.

Second, they assert that the Council is forcing shoppers to shop outside of Wellington City’s boundaries as we have not provided enough opportunity for retail activities to locate here.

The fact is that Wellington has a range of shopping opportunities, a major centre in the CBD and a number of large town centres and smaller neighbourhood centres. What we don’t yet have is a major shopping mall. This is the primary reason why people tend to travel outside of the city’s boundaries to Queensgate in Lower Hutt and North City in Porirua. This situation may change quite quickly however, with advanced proposals to build one of the largest malls in the country in Johnsonville.

The Council’s other prime motivation for proposing a ‘work area’ commercial zone for part of Rongotai is based on the concern that ‘industrial’ activity is also being pushed out of Wellington City by higher-priced activities - including apartments and townhouses built in commercial zones.

Space for general commercial or ‘industrial’ activity, including – but not limited to – light manufacturing, courier bases, office servicing, catering, vehicle repairs and panelbeating is now at a premium in Wellington City. That’s why we want to designate the work areas in the District Plan to make it possible for such activities to continue.

RR’s claim that Rongotai could become a preferred location for ‘noxious’ activities like abattoirs and quarries really is scaremongering.

According to that logic, at the moment those activities that do occur in ’suburban centre’ zones as defined in the District Plan (ie the meatworks and quarry in the Ngauranga Gorge ‘suburban centre’) could equally occur in any other suburban centre – whether it be in Karori, Khandallah, Johnsonville, or Rongotai.

Why don’t they? Well aside from the obvious fact that they aren’t of sufficiently high value, dollar-wise, to locate there, they would also fail a host of other rules in the Plan - think noise, heavy traffic, smell, emissions and other factors.

In many ways the proposal to create a ‘work area’ zone in Rongotai is a return to the planning regime prior to the 1994 District Plan when Wellington City did have a range of areas specifically-zoned for, say, industrial or retail use.

In 1994, for the sake of simplifying the Plan, these were all merged into one ’suburban centre’ zone, which treated, for example, Ngaio village, the Ngauranga Gorge commercial area and Rongotai as if they were the same. The new ‘work area’ proposal recognises that they aren’t.

The proposal for Rongotai would see it continue to provide space for much-needed business uses and larger retail stores – such as home improvement stores, whiteware retailers, garden centres, trade supplies, and furniture and carpet stores.

Groups like Rongotai Revived – along with the general public – can formally comment on the Rongotai proposal when it is publicly notified around August or September.

Before that, we’re also starting work on the Kilbirnie Town Centre Plan, which will improve the town centre and make it a nicer place. Public submissions will be sought on the proposal next month. For further details, check the Council’s website – www.wellington.govt.nz

 

April 2009

Rongotai Revived