KEY POINTS:
The Auckland Regional Council says it is trying to stop business development in a large chunk of rural land near Auckland International Airport for environmental and cultural reasons.
In an unprecedented move, the ARC rejected part of a local council application to extend the metropolitan urban limits which is the trigger for allowing rural land to be developed.
Manukau City Council is upset and is likely to take the ARC to court over the move, which takes out 100ha of the 1200ha of the Mangere area the council hoped to rezone.
"It's a bizarre decision that amounts to intrusion into the land use responsibilities of Manukau City Council," Mayor Sir Barry Curtis said yesterday.
"The ARC seems to have excluded a very important part of Manukau's proposed zoning change which is urgently needed for business purposes along Oruarangi Rd and to the north of the airport. Most of the 1200ha is already airport land."
Normally, the ARC would receive the whole application and allow it to proceed through a formal process. In this, commissioners representing both councils would hear public views when considering the need to vary the limits and allow a district plan zoning change.
Instead, the ARC had decided to prejudge the matter, said Sir Barry.
The rejected part of the land included a peninsula set aside for a food and beverage business cluster. The city council had provided a link to the peninsula by buying land near the Villa Maria Estate vineyard, where the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra performs its summer matinee.
The ARC accepted the rest of Manukau's application and agreed it should go on to the next stage of being publicly notified.
It rejected the 100ha area because of its proximity to the Makaurau Marae, the newly restored Oruarangi Creek and the Otuataua Stonefields Reserve and because it contained archaeologically significant sites.
Councillor Sandra Coney said the Ihumatao-Oruarangi was a forgotten gem. It was a large remnant of rural historic landscape that should be kept as open space.
The city council proposal picked out key bits for heritage protection. But these would be cramped by "big box" development and it was important to protect expansive views over the area.
The ARC commissioned a comprehensive landscape report which backed her view that the landscape needed to be seen as whole, rather than as individual heritage components.
But Sir Barry said the proposed heritage business zone was along the Oruarangi Rd frontage - opposite a large area which the city council wanted to rezone to add to the stonefields reserve.
The council wanted all of the airport brought inside the urban limit because 10,000 people were employed there.
