Buildings of unlimited height could rise across most of central Auckland under a Government proposal released on Friday 18 September, but one of the city’s best-known apartment developers says the change will not produce a single new apartment on its own.
RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop, Auckland Minister Simon Watts and Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown announced the proposals in a joint statement. They follow an investigation Bishop commissioned earlier this year into whether the city centre’s planning rules were holding back growth. The report recommends removing limits on building height, tower dimensions and separation, setbacks and floor-area ratios across much of the central city.
Under the current Auckland Unitary Plan, some parts of the city centre are capped at 72.5 metres and others at 35 metres. The report also recommends scrapping rules that limit how wide buildings above 28 metres can be. Protected viewshafts, sunlight and wind controls and heritage protections would stay in place.
The economic case rests on Government modelling. If the development that is commercially feasible is actually built and occupied, the changes could support about 17,000 additional homes, 31,600 residents and 37,200 jobs in the city centre, the NZ Herald reported. The same modelling puts the lift in annual national GDP at about $1.87 billion at full uptake, with a present value of about $42.6 billion over 40 years. The report estimates the rules would open up 20.3 million square metres of extra floor space.
Bishop tied the timing to the opening of the City Rail Link, the $5.5 billion underground line that now carries trains beneath the central city. “The next step is making sure our planning rules support Auckland to take full advantage of that investment, by allowing more people and businesses to locate close to world-class transport infrastructure,” he said.
He described the city centre as a national earner. “Auckland’s city centre is already an economic powerhouse. It accounts for around 8% of New Zealand’s GDP and nearly 6% of the country’s jobs,” Bishop said.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, who was due to speak alongside Bishop at a Committee for Auckland event on Friday morning, made the same link to the rail project. “I think now is the opportunity to ensure that Auckland is shaped by that investment, prioritising more growth in our city where our new CRL stations are just a stone’s throw away,” he said, according to RNZ.
Brown framed the plan as getting value from infrastructure ratepayers and taxpayers have already bought. “We have invested billions of dollars in the City Rail Link and in the roads, pipes and other infrastructure that supports the central city. Our planning rules should help us get the best possible return from that investment,” the mayor said.
The report also takes aim at part of the Karangahape Road Historic Heritage Area. It recommends removing what it calls non-contributing sites, properties inside the heritage area that add little to its heritage value. Examples given include the Mobil petrol station at 565 Karangahape Road and the vacant “gravel pit” development site at 538 Karangahape Road. Watts said the change “would create greater opportunities for redevelopment on sites with limited heritage value, while continuing to protect the buildings and places that give Karangahape Rd its distinctive character.”
Not everyone in the property industry thinks the rules are the problem. Mark Todd, of Ockham Residential, told RNZ that lifting the caps misses the real barrier to apartment building downtown. “There is just this myth that if I just tweak the regulations, Auckland CBD will just suddenly start sprouting apartments,” he said.
Todd argued the city already has more than enough zoned capacity. “These are political announcements. Auckland’s got enough vertically-zoned land for the rest of the century – easily,” he said. In his view the missing ingredient is people. “Auckland has got less than half the residents than it should have in its CBD if you benchmark it with comparable international cities. This won’t result in a single new apartment being built down there.”
He said large mixed-use developments around the new rail stations would not happen without support from both central and local government. “You’ve just had 20 years proving the private sector isn’t going to build you apartments in the CBD to leverage the billions of dollars we’ve invested,” Todd said. He noted he has never built in the CBD himself and was speaking as an Aucklander.
Others in the sector welcomed the move while cautioning about the pace of change. Property Council chief executive Leonie Freeman called it a positive and timely step given the rail link’s opening. “So this isn’t something that’s going to change the Auckland skyline in the next five years, but in the next 30 to 50 years we will see greater growth, and I think that’s a positive thing,” she said.
Thom Gill, of Cohausing Projects Limited, doubted building activity would come close to what the modelling suggests but supported the principle of simpler rules. He opposed allowing high-rises around Karangahape Road, which he described as already a coherent urban environment.
The gap between what planning rules allow and what actually gets built is well known in Auckland. Developers need buyers or tenants at prices that cover the cost of building. The Government’s own figures are framed around development that is commercially feasible, and even supporters such as the Property Council expect any change to the skyline to take decades rather than years.
The city centre proposals sit alongside, but are separate from, Plan Change 120, Auckland Council’s wider housing intensification plan. That plan would allow apartment towers of 10 and 15 storeys near most inner-city train stations on the Western, Eastern and Southern lines, and six-storey buildings along the busiest bus routes. The Government has also been wrestling with the council over the infrastructure cost of fast-track housing in the region.
For readers wanting the background on the rail project at the centre of the argument, our feature What lies beneath the City Rail Link walks through the tunnels and the ground they pass through.
Public consultation on the proposals runs for 20 working days, closing at 11.59pm on Friday 16 October.
Would you like to see towers of any height in central Auckland, or is Mark Todd right that the rules were never the problem? Tell us what you think in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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