Newspaper Article 1994 – Dwyer: Ban on houses will hurt

Hastings District Council

Dwyer: Ban on houses will hurt

Hastings faces severe consequences if housing development within the city is prevented, mayor Jeremy Dwyer said yesterday.

Speaking during a district debate on options for housing expansion, Mr Dwyer said the central business district, schools and services could all be adversely hit.

“Hastings needs and deserves a shot in the arm urgently. The retail centre is just emerging from hard years. High schools are fighting for survival. Investment hinges on what we do. There is a need for confidence,” he said.

“I want to warn that the impact of ring-fencing the city of Hastings, which is clearly in some people’s minds, or anything akin to it, will have severe consequences. The people of the district and region will miss out as a whole.

Common ground

Mr Dwyer told his councillors they had a huge responsibility to find common ground between people, land and the environment.

He said a challenge was to break a generations-old deadlock of contrary opinion.

“We have got to cut through the clash of unbending purist principles, and sometimes sheer puffery, and create our own identity. The council is more than half a decade old and there can be no excuses for problems, errors, or inflexibilities we might have inherited. Our focus now has to be to represent all communities of interest and to support their interdependence.

“Economics is not a pre-eminent god, and the protection of the soil for production over living space for the people – when both are entitled to sustainability – should not be raised to the status of a commandment.

“The father, the son and the holy ghost should not be trivialised into: The fertile, the soil, and the holy sod.”

Poem to dwell on

Mr Dwyer said the abuse of fertile land was not only caused by urban growth. Other factors included erosion, overstocking, forest clearance, sprays and chemicals.

He left his councillors with a poem to dwell on:

I give you this city
I give you this town
Neglect its vitality, we all will go down
I present you the soil; present you the land
It is this that grows people
We must understand.

Main areas targeted

Housing development in the Hastings district will mainly be directed to Havelock North and the Irongate Rd-York Rd area during the next 25 years.

Hastings councillors agreed yesterday to adopt all the recommendations of the Beca Carter Hollings and Ferner report on an urban development strategy, except for the 70-hectare Lyndhurst area.

Brookvale will be expected to provide 1000 house sites and the surrounding Havelock Hills a further 100. Fulford Rd will be retained as a barrier between urban expansion and rural uses.

Goddard Lane, where the HortResearch centre is located, will be rezoned residential. This will give the potential for 90 houses.

The Irongate Rd-York Rd area on the fringe of Flaxmere is expected to yield 320 sites, catering for most of the new housing demand in Hastings for at least 25 years. The subdivision of large existing house sites is also expected to relieve pressure.

The go-ahead was given for more houses at Clive. The settlement between Hastings and Napier is expected to yield 90 more house sites.

Further development will be encouraged at Maraekakaho and Omaranui [Omarunui]. The 170ha Parkhill area, near Te Awanga, will be considered for rezoning.

Mangaroa was dropped as an option for rural-residential development.

Lyndhurst area possible

The Lyndhurst Rd area could still be used for houses, despite the council’s dropping the area for residential development.

Resource management division manager Murray Buchanan said today that private scheme changes could be used to create new house sites.

Mr Buchanan said the Beca Carter Hollings and Ferner report’s recommendation to use Lyndhurst could be called as evidence in favour of the applicant.

“The report would give them a very good case,” he said.

Mr Buchanan said the Irongate/York area was the only council-driven development initiative in Hastings. Developers and house buyers would have to be convinced it was a good place to live.

Photo caption – Mr Dwyer… don’t ring-fence the city.