Residents fight high-rise to maintain village character

Residents Beverley Simmons, Richard Wasely, Hueline Massey, Sally Meiklejohn and Lyn Wade among the trees to be felled. Picture / Paul Estcourt

Warkworth residents are rallying to fight a plan for a six-storey building they say will spoil the low-rise and heritage character of their village.

The building will be for apartments, shops and a restaurant behind the 100-year-old hotel on Queen St.

"This building in the centre of the village would be totally intrusive and out of scale and not compatible with the scale of existing buildings," said resident Beverley Simmons.

She said Auckland-based developer Winslow Properties also wanted to remove a much-admired copse of 25 oak trees on the site's Neville St frontage, as well as cabbage trees and norfolk pines.

"They provide an important spatial element and ambience to the town centre and a visual link to the reserve on the northern edge of the river."

The level of traffic generated was underestimated and would worsen congestion, she said.

Another resident, former local government leader Sir Gordon Mason, said people wanted to know more.

The developer had been asked to address a public meeting on February 14.

Rodney District Council has set February 27 as the closing date for views on the bid for a resource consent for the building.

Winslow's development manager, Dale Smith, said the $35 million complex would fill a need in the town for a greater variety of shops and visitor accommodation and was a way of getting the heritage hotel restored.

Mr Smith said Winslow had struck similar resistance in Russell in the Bay of islands when it applied to build luxury tourist cottages in the historic village.

"What we have built there everyone thinks is fantastic.

"We try to do buildings that fit in with the character of the town.

Mr Smith said the slope of the site meant the building's height would not be obvious from the Neville St frontage.

The council has approved the felling of a manna gum tree which was listed in the District Plan as protected and Mr Smith said an arborist had declared the grove of "spindly" oaks to be in poor health.