Rudman's city: Better rules needed and an early warning system

By BRIAN RUDMAN

For anyone about to leap in and "invest" in a dream apartment, I offer a salutary story. Just on three years ago, 120 investors - many of them overseas - took possession of their little slices of the 13-storey Oxford Apartments in inner-city Mount St.

The lucky owners on the eastern side of the building had sweeping views out over the Domain. Some even got harbour views. So captivated were they by the thought of these views that none of them seems to have stopped to think of the implications of buying an apartment within spitting distance of an adjacent development site. Or if they did, they brushed any concerns to one side.

That was then. Over the past week or so has come the bad news. From Hong Kong to Auckland City they've been receiving letters from Auckland City notifying them that a 13-storey, 113-room, student accommodation block is to be erected slap-bang alongside the Oxford. Instead of basking in the sunlight and the views, residents will have to make do with reaching out from their balconies and touching the bleak concrete wall, just 1.5m away. If they want a sun, they'll have to lean across and paint one on the wall.

The letter from the council offers no hope. It's not telling them how to object or attend a hearing. It's telling them the fight's over before it started as far as council's concerned.

The proposed building fully complies with the district plan provisions for the Commercial 8B zone it occupies, and the council has already given it the go-ahead on a non-notified basis.

But before you think the council has no heart, think again. Planning sub-committee chair Juliet Yates issued a "buyers beware" press release, using the Oxford Apartments as the text for the day.

She also also took the unusual step of informing the Oxford's owners of the approval so that they had the opportunity to take civil proceedings, or try to negotiate with the developers before the project began. Senior planner Earl Brookbanks had recommended this in his report as a way of fulfilling council's "moral obligation" to these people.

If ever you doubted the old adage about buyer beware, particularly in real estate, read on. Mr Brookbanks observed how the Oxford had been "injudiciously" designed so that "the facade on its eastern side, being the boundary with the proposed development at 11 Mount St, has windows and balconies which will be completely built out by the proposed development ...

"While it is clear that the owners and occupiers of those units may be concerned about being completely built out, one has to ask on what basis they imagine that the neighbouring subject site would not be developed to the full extent permitted."

He concludes: " ... this is a most unfortunate situation where the real problem is not caused by the proposed development but by the lack of foresight on the part of the developers of 13-15 Mount St. The owners and occupiers of the units may have to look to those developers or their agents for some solution rather than to the council or to the present application."

Mrs Yates, in her "check before you buy" press statement, points the finger at developers. "Residential developments should not proceed in the central area without the developers taking into account not just what exists next door today, but what may be developed in the future. In this case, the Quest [which the Oxford is also known as] did not include a larger separation strip from its neighbour."

This is surely a rather naive view of developers. We all know that it is in the nature of the trade to push the rules as far as possible - and then some. The thought that, out of the goodness of their hearts, they would leave part of a speculative development site undeveloped seems starry-eyed.

Instead of Mrs Yates wagging her admonitory but powerless finger at the developers, a more realistic solution would be a sterner regulatory regime that made what she suggests mandatory. Any system that permits windows and balconies along a boundary, knowing a building can be built to the same line, is flawed.

More active consumer education would help too. The council already has an advice booklet for those contemplating buying in the inner city. Why not force real estate agents to make this available at every open-home session?

It's not much, but it would be a start.

Then we could consider something along the lines of an environmental impact report, where developers are obliged to provide customers with an independent report on how the new development interfaces with the surrounding community.

Such a report could point out to potential buyers at the heavily marketed apartment complex in the old Beaumont St gasworks, for instance, that the nearby four-lane Victoria Park flyover is likely to grow another two lanes.