Right now Wellington is undergoing hearings on what may be the most important discussions on the future – the Hearings on the proposed new District Plan. There have been a number of these Hearings, which have looked at General District Plan matters, Suburban matters, Heritage aspects, and in the current hearing, the City Centres. The outcome from these Hearings will affect the city looks, works and feels for the next 50 years – in other words, probably for at least the rest of our lives, and probably lot longer. Seeing as this is so important, you might be thinking that the Hearings would be packed out with members of the Public, and at least full of the Press (eg the Post and the Scoop). Sadly, you would be wrong. It’s all fairly empty and void of content, except for the four Commissioners and a couple of Submitters at a time. “Dry” would be a polite way to put it.
I’ve recently found that these Hearings are being recorded and posted on line as YouTube videos, so you can watch them later. I presume that they are also being streamed live, but if so, I do not know where they are. But, so, at present you can follow the presentations by Submitters online, if you have lots of spare time. Each YouTube video is 6 or 7 or 8 hours long – so it is not for the faint-hearted.
What would be great here is for someone to provide a summary of each of videos within each of the Hearing Streams – but that isn’t going to be the Fish, as life is simply too short for anyone here to want to do that. I’ve added in a brief summary of what I understand is in each of the Hearings (but having not sat through them all, I could be wrong!). Feel free to add in further information in the comments below.
Hearing Stream 1 (General) – Week One, Day One. This took the Hearing into some uncharted territory which was interesting in terms of trying to define what is a “Rapid Transit” public transport system, as opposed to a public transport system that caters for the Public, yet is not really very Rapid at all. Yes, the focus was on the Johnsonville Line and therefore the suburbs that this serves – the Khandallah Darlings who most certainly do not want to have any multi-storey buildings at all, regardless of who lives in them. But especially if there is Medium Density housing, if any at all. I suspect that this Stream will have got most of the publicity – certainly appeared so from the newspaper.
Hearing Stream 2 (Residential/Suburban) – Week One, Day One. I don’t envy the Commissioner’s tasks here at all – it is a very mixed up bag of kittens that they need to sort out. A lot of discussing the Section 32 reports, whatever those are? And the Section 42a reports, and the NPS-UDC etc. Starts off with discussion from Mr Patterson and Mr Lewandowski.
Hearing Stream 3 (Heritage) – Week One, Day One. This Stream was all about the Heritage aspects of Wellington, of which there are many, and these are varied. Heritage Areas, Heritage Buildings, Heritage Sites, and other things – whether they are indeed Heritage or not. Presumably here there are also discussions on what is Heritage and what is Character. Basically – should old buildings still exist, and if so, then on what grounds do they exist?
Hearing Stream 4 (Centres, including City Centre) – Week One, Day One. This is the one that is on now – all about the Centre of the City, and also the Centres away from the Centre – eg Neighbourhood Centres, Suburban Centres, etc. I’m suspecting that there will be many property developers submitting on this aspect – no doubt asking for such dubious outcomes such as unlimited building heights and a complete absence of any need for Public Notification.
It strikes me that this is a hazardous and haphazard way of sorting out a city’s future. There are four Commissioners, not necessarily knowing very much about Wellington, who are summing up and making rulings on the future Plan for Wellington, despite apparently not knowing very much about the city. Two of the Commissioners are female and two are male, if indeed we are still allowed to classify people by their gender in this modern age. As one of the Commissioners just said, “This is all a big learning curve for us”. Does not fill me with confidence.
A major arguing point for the submitting Developers is that there should be no Notification of developments – basically because that means that if people know what is being proposed, they will object to it, and this will slow things down and that will cost someone money. Does that ring true to you? Or is it more true that people will object to something bad, over something good? And why does Notification need to take so long?
You have to dig around a bit but the live stream is found half way down this page https://wellington.govt.nz/your-council/plans-policies-and-bylaws/district-plan/proposed-district-plan/hearings-information/hearings-topics-and-schedule/hearing-stream-4
In addition, Nemo, if you or anyone else sufficiently interested, and have the time and the patience you can read all the expert evidence and summaries from the submitters on the site above.
There are actually eight Commissioners. See https://wellington.govt.nz/your-council/plans-policies-and-bylaws/district-plan/proposed-district-plan/hearings-information/meet-the-hearings-panel All sat on Stream 1 and they have split into smaller panels for subsequent streams. They are all familiar with planning in Wellington. The chair has a legal background. He lived and worked in Wellington for 33 years. Many of the others have lived and worked here.
The Commissioners have gone on site visits, including an excursion on the Johnsonville Train and walking steps to the top of Johnsonville which some found quite hard, to make sure they have a recent view of the matters under discussion. They read all the material submitted to them, are respectful, perceptive and prepared to ask challenging questions. I would doubt that the same could be said of all of our councillors.
There have been no objections raised, that I am aware of, to three storey medium density in any suburb. WCC has implemented the government’s medium density changes and upzoned 90% of the Outer Suburbs to Medium Density. But if it takes off some homes might end up with water tanks instead of mains water and sewage stored in on site tanks for collection and trucking to Moa Point.
Wellingtonians (myself included sometimes) object to everything. I’s why nothing gets done in this city.
Thanks Julienz ! Excellent info – just what I needed. I’ll go have a look.
Not sure if people are aware, but what the City Centres Zone is currently being proposed as is to have NO HEIGHT LIMITS – in other words, potentially unlimited height to all / any buildings in teh entire CCZ. As the CCZ is now enlarged to include not just the CBD but also all of Te Aro and the length of Adelaide Road going from the city down to about Loafer’s Lodge.
So, buildings were once restricted to 27m in Te Aro – then it was proposed as 42.5m in height, and now it effectively says that heights can be UNLIMITED. So presumably 60m, 80m, 100m, 150m ? Really? All as long as you do things that contribute to the City Outcomes Contribution – so, have some assisted housing in the scheme somewhere, aim for a Greenstar development, enabling ease of access for people of all ages, and contributing to public space provision nearby.
Have I got that right?
area available for footprint and strength of underlying rock will have a bearing on how high they can go – I suspect the latter will be more important
Te Aro is a bit of a patchwork of private small sites so that will have an effect on going up high
Apparently once you get properly high wind loading becomes the main limiting factor
Oh and aesthetics of course Nemo
Can’t wait to see a Burj Khalifa-style emergency housing high-rise go up in the next decade then.
（ ´_⊃｀）
Won’t happen cos the lifts would always be on the blink
Have you seen how people treat housing that they don’t own?
For my sins I have been working in Stokes Valley lately, there’s a crackhead tranny inhabiting the burnt out flats behind the mall and she screams arguments to herself all day
If this is society now with practically full employment but unaffordable housing, just wait til the recession bites and unemployment goes up
Seamonkey – you actually got me to start on a photomontage of the Burj Khalifa and loads of boats full of refugees, but then I got so overcome with the faces of these poor bloody migrants – down on their absolute lowest of the low ebbs of their lives, all with desperation and anticipation and hopes that somehow the world would treat them better in the future than it had in the past… and I couldn’t do it. Their lives are just too miserable to become the butt of a joke by me, even though they would never see it.
The thing is, even though it may feel to Europe that there is a tidal-wave of migrants now, that is probably nothing compared to what is going to happen in the future. Who in their right mind would want to live in Libya or Algeria now? Their countries are war-torn shit-holes of misery with little hope for a better future and they are willing to pay thousands – more than their life savings – for an incredibly cramped seat on an unfeasibly over-loaded boat that chugs slowly across the Med to a highly uncertain future and with a good chance of sinking on the way. It’s miserable beyond belief – and even if they get to Europe in one piece they will still have a shit time when they get there. Climate change and global warming is only going to make it much much worse. Literally, millions of people are going to be on the move, all over the world.
Calm down, this is wellington ,
13 stories is about as “high rise” as you are gonna get for Social housing
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/122517778/government-gives-10-million-for-social-housing-and-park-in-central-wellington
Meanwhile, another lap of the LGWM roundabout:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/wellington/132432216/moore-wilsons-among-businesses-slamming-wellington-citys-golden-mile-proposal
Hold the phone:
https://thespinoff.co.nz/the-bulletin/30-06-2023/golden-mile-stumbles-across-finish-line
I’m holding, but it’s not ringing. . . out of idle curiosity, how will pedestrianizing Lambton Quay improve traffic flow to help Wellington to get moving?
I’m no traffic expert (mind you, the ones I’ve had to deal with don’t give me much hope).
Perhaps block-by-block intersection red lights and kerb crawling for parks are the biggest causes of sclerosis. Is it not possible that ending the endless circling in hope of a vacant hitching rail will mean the arterial routes can become just that and the lifeblood might flow?
My understanding of all this is that, at present, the buses get stuck in traffic. Clearly, as the buses are the only means of public transport in actual Wellington, we need to get the buses moving faster. At present, also, Wellington is currently nearing Peak Bus – ie we can’t physically fit in more buses down the Golden Mile at Peak Hour commuter traffic. Many of you readers will have experienced that, perhaps even daily. The slightest glitch, like a white tradies van parked badly (when is one of those not parked badly??) can create a bottleneck and cause all the traffic to bank up badly, causing chaos.
The answer to all this is that the traffic is getting banned, generally. This is not in any real way a bad thing, as there is no need for you and me to travel by car down the length of the Mile, except if we are getting pretty lazy (or are disabled) and need to get dropped off at the actual door. For most of us, travelling along Featherston and ducking up one of the side roads would get us just as close.
Obviously, there are some times when a van or truck needs to get right to the door of the building, and for most of the time, these people are tradies, working on an internal fit out, or delivery people, dropping off physical packages. These are quite frequent – and at present, nearly every park along the Mile is taken by a van or a Ute, indicating this is already working. One simple answer to that is that some of these deliveries can be made outside regular hours – certainly not within the morning peak (say, 7.30 to 10.00am) or the evening peak (I dunno – maybe 3.30 to 7.00pm?). McDonald’s, for instance, deliver their burgers and crap at about 5 in the morning, while other stores may deliver things at 10 at night.
But what if you really absolutely have to have a delivery at 9am or at 4.30pm ? What then? Well, my answer would be – tough shit, you can walk a block to pick it up. Its not that hard. Most cities around the world have figured out how to do this. Why is it impossible to do this in Wellington?