Heritage champions help changes

Heritage campaigner Elsbeth Hardie outside the saved former Paykel homestead in St Stephens Avenue, Parnell. Picture / Martin Sykes

"We all want to live in a better environment," says Elsbeth Hardie, whose anger at the loss of a stately Edwardian home in Parnell for apartments has helped bring a sea change towards heritage at Auckland City.

This month has seen the Parnell home gain heritage status and the council introduce sweeping changes to prevent the demolition or removal of 16,300 character homes without a resource consent.

Watching lovely old homes being demolished for "ugly, featureless giant slabs of concrete" became too much for the St Stephens Ave resident of 10 years, whose own 1929, arts and craft home embodies her traditional Christchurch values.

"It's a very Riccarton house," says Elsbeth Hardie, who was juggling part-time studies in English literature with bringing up a young daughter and managing a household when she got wind last year of the removal of the stately Edwardian home built by the Paykel family on a busy corner opposite Parnell Primary School.

Sure, new apartments are allowable under the district scheme, but street by street, the city's heritage is being torn away, she pleaded before the previous council - a council she described as a "gutless bunch with little vision and no passion".

With a handful of locals - including architect Kathryn Carter who went on to be elected to the Hobson community board on the pro-heritage Action Hobson ticket - Elsbeth Hardie and co used old-fashioned tools to stimulate debate on heritage matters. A petition on the counter of local shops attracted 1320 signatures, door knocking and approaching politicians and aspiring politicians in the lead-up to the October local body elections sparked a public outcry.

Elsbeth Hardie's skills as a former public relations specialist, the skills of her lawyer partner, George Bogiatto, and Kathryn Carter's architectural work made the council sit up and take notice of the case to save the home built by Max Paykel, a relative of Maurice Paykel, one of the founders of Fisher & Paykel.

Locals were up against developer Lindsay Singleton, who had council consent to remove the house for apartments, and council officers, hesitant about overriding property rights by placing a heritage order on the property.

In June last year, a group of councillors tried to the stop the house "slipping through our fingers" but Mayor John Banks stepped in and stopped the council pulling the rug on the developer at the 11th hour.

Almost a year to the day later, the new council has placed a category B heritage status on 42 St Stephens Ave and six other inner-city buildings. Newman Hall, in Waterloo Quadrant, built in 1863-1864 by one of the city's early merchants, David Nathan, has been given category A heritage status. A consent to remove 42 St Stephens Ave is still in place but it is thought that the new owner "may not give effect" to it.

Elsbeth Hardie, a member of the local heritage watchdog Parnell First, is still wary about the status of the removal/demolition consent.

"I can only presume the council has done its homework and is moving in a direction that it intends to enforce." She welcomes the progress being made by the new council: "I don't see heritage as something standing on a pedestal.

"Heritage is part of urban design and what I'm pleased about is this council seems to be saying that it wants to see better urban design that encompasses maintenance of existing properties as well as ensuring future buildings say something about our city."