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The North Shore City Council - avowed preserver of Devonport heritage values - has overseen the destruction of a landmark $4 million Cheltenham Beach villa without so much as consulting the neighbours.
The council in February approved a non-notified application by the Lucas family, new owners of 15 Arawa Ave, to rotate the two-storey, five-bedroom, beachfront homestead and restore its original form, construct a replacement garage, new decking and entrance verandah and remove six protected trees of the 52 on the site.
But in recent days aghast neighbours have watched the "wholesale destruction" of the iconic 1910 Devonport building with beautiful, traditional French doors and stained glass windows ripped out and hauled away by demolition workers. Its owners say they have done nothing wrong and are simply following leaky home regulations.
This is the fourth time in a decade that the council has permitted so-called renovations that saw Devonport character homes virtually destroyed.
Devonport accountant Christine McDonald once cherished her early morning view. From the east-facing windows of her Cheltenham home she watched tuis cavorting in mature gum trees on her neighbour's boundary, with glimpses of the sparkling Waitemata and Rangitoto Island.
When the villa next door sold last year for $3.65 million McDonald and her husband, Mike, were very positive.
"The house needed some maintenance and we were optimistic. We looked forward to renovations restoring this charming home to its former glory."
Most of the McDonalds' windows and the major orientation of their two-storey house faces 15 Arawa Ave.
"With other street residents we waited for a resource consent notice to go up. We expected to be affected parties." McDonald was unsettled to learn the council had approved all plans on a non-notified basis.
In answer to her concerns, the council emailed drawings and plans of the "alteration and renovation" and indicated several protected trees would be cut down to facilitate rotation of the existing house. McDonald said it was hard to tell what the plans showed exactly in relation to the old house, "but they didn't mention demolition and so we weren't unhappy".
She hastened to add she didn't blame the new owners for the devastation. "While we don't agree with the decision [to not notify the application] and are very unhappy about the outcome, the new owners asked and the council approved the plans. The owners followed the rules, went through the processes and that's all that can be expected."
McDonald was told in May that her only recourse if she wanted to challenge the non-notifiable consent was to seek a "judicial review" in the Environment Court.
McDonald said she had "no appetite for that conflict" and decided against that course - a decision she has come to rue.
On August 1, 20-plus trees on the property - several more than 15m high and some protected under local regulations - were levelled in a day.
Soon after, work began on the house. "Enormous effort was put into lifting the building, rotating it and putting it on new foundations," said McDonald. "We looked forward to the renovation and watching the 'old girl' being brought back to life."
Instead, in mid-October, McDonald watched aghast as demolition contractors disassembled the top storey, and then began "wholesale demolition" of the ground floor.
"It seemed so bizarre. Why cut down trees so you had room to reorient the building, spend a fortune lifting, turning and repiling it and then demolish it," she said.
All that remains today is one wall, a partial section of flooring, no windows and no roof. "The house as such has gone," lamented McDonald. "I regret dreadfully now the decision not to go for a judicial review. My failure to do that has cost Devonport a heritage house."
A circumspect Devonport Community Board chairman Mike Cohen would only admit to being disappointed at the destruction.
"Any reasonable person looking at it can see it is a demolition rather than an alteration. The application had all the right words in a fuzzy sense about restoration. Looking at the information supplied you couldn't have expected that level of demolition. And our heritage architect even supported it."
At the time of application, the work complied, but a new notified scheme, which would have applied just a month after the house sale was settled, does not permit renovations which destroy more than 30 per cent of the mass of any house.
Nothing can bring the house back, Cohen says, but council officers will hold a workshop "as a case study to see how we could better have covered our bases".
Trish Deans, chairperson of community pressure group Devonport Heritage, said that once again the council had badly handled heritage issues delivering a "nightmare result".
"I'm devastated. After 12 years of hard work trying to save these important houses another one's been torn to shreds. The council says it cares about heritage issues and they have the rules and regulations, so why is it going so terribly wrong still? The community is in horror."
Home-owner, Michael Lucas, is unrepentant and says he, wife Rebecca and two preschool children are looking forward to joining the Devonport community next year.
He says he's sad the builders on his site are being abused by locals who "just don't understand the current building codes.
"We never intended for it to be demolished and it's costing a huge amount of money. It's not our fault or the council's. We're just following the government's regulations around leaky homes. To comply with the current building code we had to take down all walls and put in a cavity. It's going to apply to a lot more old buildings as people try and restore them."
