Ryman Healthcare wants to put up a retirement village in Karori, along with a pile of related services. They've bought the old Karori teachers' college.
It's a great site - easy land to build on, right on bus routes, an easy walk to Karori village and right next door to the Karori Swimming Pool.
But there's a problem. The old Karori teacher's college is apparently a great example of 1970 brutalist architecture, and New Zealand has a rather low threshold for applying heritage designations to buildings. Heritage New Zealand wants to impose a Category 1 listing on it.
Meanwhile, in Auckland, View West wants to tear down an old unreinforced soft concrete church in Epsom that is at risk of falling down onto passers-by and replace it with terraced housing - the kind of dense inner-suburb housing that Auckland is missing. Heritage New Zealand opposes that, noting "unacceptable adverse historic heritage effects."
I have a small proposal. Until the housing crisis ends, no new heritage designations. If a building or site is of sufficient value, Heritage New Zealand should solicit donations so that it might purchase the site. The good people at Architecture Centre might chip in to buy the Karori teacher's college as they seem rather fond of it. As owner of the building, Heritage New Zealand would then be able develop the site as it deems best.
For buildings with existing heritage designations, a Council refusal to grant consent to develop for housing should be treated as a Council offer to purchase the site at its rateable value. Submissions opposing the development should be treated as offers to contribute towards Council's purchase of the building. Submissions opposing development that do not include a pledged amount to contribute towards the site's purchase should have no standing. Council then can decide whether the weight of opposition, along with its own willingness to contribute towards buying the site, is sufficient to warrant purchase of the site.
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