Pakiri Beach clifftop house gets nod

Rae Ah chee says the house will be built in a year. Picture / Paul Estcourt

Rodney District Council planning commissioners have approved a controversial bid by Auckland businessmen to build a house on the clifftop at Pakiri Beach.

In a reserved decision, the commissioners rejected the opposition of the Auckland Regional Council, which last December spent $20 million buying the surrounding rural land for a new park.

The ARC claimed the proposed house would be so big it would spoil iconic views of visitors to the park and that granting resource consent for it went against the Rodney District Plan and the Auckland Regional Policy Statement.

However, the commissioners said the conditions they had imposed and landscaping would avoid "any significant adverse visual and landscape effects."

In response to Pakiri residents' concerns about instability of the cliff, the commissioners said revegetation of the site was well established and over time should help stabilise the steep slopes.

The decision was received with relief yesterday by the partners in the proposed house, catering supremo Rae Ah Chee and Fruitworld director Billy Chong and his wife Evelyn.

They bought lot 3 of the rural subdivision in July 2004 for a retirement home and have since modified plans to get district council approval for a home of 590 sq m and 6.8m high, sunk into surroundings of planted mounds and 4500 native trees.

Mr Ah Chee said: "It's taken two years, one month and 21 days to get this far - after all the court decisions that preceded the Arrigato subdivision.

"The court determined what we could build - height, size, design and site location.

"We are saying, is the law not really the law? Why did we have to go through all this to get a consent to build that really should have been a formality?"

Mr Ah Chee said he wondered whether it was because the ARC wanted to buy out the partners, having secured the rest of the subdivision as well as the neighbouring land from boxer David Tua.

The house would be built in a year if there were no appeals against the resource consent to the Environment Court.

ARC parks chairwoman Sandra Coney was unavailable for comment last night but the ARC has a fortnight to lodge an appeal.