Talk about a NewsFlash ! Wow – the Shelly Bay development, that no-one seemed to like or want, has just been cancelled. Not postponed, or sidelined, or put on the backburner for a while – the developer Ian Cassells has sold the site to everyone’s favourite hobbit, Lord Jackson of Underhill. No, seriously folks, that is big news, and I think probably also fantastic news as well.
Preliminary indications from official media indicates that Jackson and Walsh are unlikely to want to continue with the multitude of apartments planned and are instead going to turn this into more of a natural park. Would possibly have been nicer to get this underway before someone burnt down the old sheds, but regardless: this Fish is in Favour !
More to come, I’m sure!
Ohh..a little sad but also not surprised.
It would be nice to see something actually progressing in this city for once. Seems like we have been relatively stagnant for the last 15 years – combine that with my growing cynicism
Was on the fence about this – sea level rise and all that – but I’m too gleeful that a major project like this has been canned. What does this spell out of other city projects.
Maybe I should move to Auckland… or just have a whiskey.
Chitty chitty bang bang museum coming right up
A skinny road in and out could never support a big population but it looks like a victory for the NIMBYS and there’s a metric fucktonne of them out there..
I reckon the roading aspect was always the problem for the scheme.
The limitations of the road access should be taken advantage of; no private car access. Bikes, e-scooters and walkers/runners. Electric golf carts for the disabled. Delivery vehicles only before 10am. Emergency vehicles when needed.
The might even make a weekend ferry service viable.
That would have been my hope for the scheme as well. There’s no room for that big extra influx of home dwellers every rush hour. Why not, quite seriously, dynamite the road and let it fall into the sea. Replace the access wth a ferry service only.
Isn’t the court case over the original sale process still going on? This one could run and run. . .
Well, so it probably should !! It was pretty dodgy after all. And despite people spitting tacks at the Council, this time it was really just one part of the iwi versus another part of the iwi, wasn’t it ?
Seems more like one part of the kiwi versus another part of the kiwi, if you’ll forgive the pun.
Yes, the sale of the various different land packages was always a stumbling block on this project. From memory, there was just a small sliver of land that ran down the middle of the road at the seafront that was owned by the Council – and that the other land packages could not make work without. As to exactly why the Council did not simply own all the road, as it would usually do anywhere else in the city, I have no idea. Possibly something to do with the land owned by the Defence Force?
But the biggest issue was surely that the land repatriated back to the iwi, and which the iwi did not want to sell, was then sliced up into a number of smaller sales and sold to the Wellington Company (Cassell’s property vehicle) without going through proper channels at the iwi. This should have been hitting the news for years as the biggest land grab, of Maori ripping off Maori, of dishonest business dealings. Surely this must be the Court case that is running on and on?
It got a lot of news coverage. I imagine Justin Lester is spitting tacks!
It’s all starting to blur… Is there some connection? Is Sir PJ backing Winston? Does anybody remember Andy Foster running in Wellington Central for NZ First in 2017?
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/election-2023-former-wellington-mayor-andy-foster-running-for-new-zealand-first/IPEMBGZQLNG7PC4HIB6L6AT77M/
Yes, I remember that Shelly Bay in 2017 hosted the Foster Mayoral launch and Sir Peter was there, ensuring a large Press presence. Can’t remember what was said though – were the speeches for the development or against it? Sir PJ was obviously pumping a bit of loose cash into the Foster run for the Mayoralty, and it worked. He may, yes, even be backing Andy Foster a bit in this latest bid as well. But: PJ backing Winston ??!!! Much as I like a good fairytale full of hobbitses, I think that theory is going too far.
Leaving aside ownership issues, as a car-dependent community (a ferry was never going to cut it, and too far to walk) with inadequate road access (too narrow) this development would likely not have survived the normal resource consent process unscathed.
But thanks to WCC seizing the opportunity presented by National government’s Special Housing Areas, it never had that scrutiny or public input, and was effectively a fait accompli from the word go.
Red tape often serves a very useful purpose!
Agreed. That’s one of the dismal failures of the last National gov – the SHA never worked, in Wellington at least. Perhaps maybe they worked in AK ? Dunno. Will they make a comeback when Lux & co get back in ?
If National keep the NPS-Ud as they say they will, and force 30 years of land onto the market at once, I can’t imagine they’d waste time with SHAs.
An excerpt from https://www.thepost.co.nz/a/nz-news/350066148/what-killed-shelly-bay-project
“Cassels did not return calls for comment on Sunday, but fellow developer Sir Mark Dunajtschik believed the cost and time battling everything but construction resulted in Cassels finally throwing in the towel.
Former Wellington City councillor Sean Rush, who was part of a group of councillors who signed a notice of motion to stop the council from evicting an occupation of Shelly Bay in 2021, believed the project was devised in a climate of low interest and low inflation, which no longer existed.
“It would be profitability … he is a businessman,” Rush said. QV’s Costbuilder database shows since 2016 construction costs have risen by at least 42%. The project was long-rumoured to be backed by Chinese money and China’s economy was slowing down, Rush said. Cassels has previously denied having Chinese backers.
“Developer Richard Burrell said town houses, which were a major part of the development, were hardly selling in Wellington. That, mixed with interest rates going from 3% to 8% since Cassels started looking at Shelly Bay, were what killed it, he said. He understood Jackson and Walsh, with long-running ties to the bay, paid $39m for the land.”
“The Shelly Bay saga started in 2009 when the Port Nicholson Block Settlement Trust, on behalf of Taranaki Whānui, used $16m of a Tiriti o Waitangi settlement to buy former Air Force land there. It came out that Jackson, since 2008, had been in talks with Sir Ngatata Love, from the iwi, about a film museum there. That failed in 2012, but Jackson’s subsequent opposition kept the development in the news. By 2014, Cassels had signed a deal with Taranaki Whānui for his planned development there. A year later, he was part of a Wellington civic and business delegation that travelled to China to attract investment into the capital.”
“Fu Wah Properties and Beijing Construction Engineering Group (BCEG) signed a memorandum of understanding with Wellington City Council to support Wellington projects, including Shelly Bay, it was reported at the time. In early June this year, a suspicious fire burned the landmark Shed 8 — known as the sawtooth building — to the ground and with it the site was shut down to all due to concerns about airborne carcinogen asbestos. The site is expected to reopen in late-September.”
Beijing Construction Engineering Group is a Chinese government owned construction company,
I think the tide has seriously gone out in the 5-eyes world for having agents of the Chinese state building your Stuff…even a poxy little project like this in the bottom of the South Pacific,
Not being paranoid at all, but I guess they would have to build a wharf, to unload materials, and to act as a safe place for Chinese ships to dock…
@Alan, yeah they could photocopy the plans they used for this one is Vanuatu :)
https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/south-pacific/103037973/the-great-wharf-from-china-raising-eyebrows-across-the-pacific