KEY POINTS:
Auckland City will today hear an application for a controversial 15-level apartment development on the site of the city's most historic hotel.
Lily Zhong's Winning Investments is applying to put up more than 60 units at 75 Wakefield St, home of the Fitzroy which is Auckland's oldest hotel, built in 1855.
The pub has the highest level of protection from the Historic Places Trust and a Category B rating from Auckland City Council.
In 2004, consent was granted for the new apartment block on the site but no work has started and the latest application is to vary the original consent and to extend it for five years.
Heritage consultant Allan Matson said he wanted to be heard to table evidence on the adverse effects of the new development. He is opposing the renewal of the resource consent, saying he will present new evidence of the potential for a new design which would preserve the hotel.
An independent hearings commissioner, Alan Dormer, heard the original consent for a proposal on the site in 2004 and is scheduled to hear the application today. Winning's directors are Lin Zhong, Hong Wu Zhang and Hong Shen Zhong, all of Torbay.
The developer has already applied to demolish the historic building but that consent lapsed in 2006.
Matson said the apartment block would rise in the middle of the old hotel.
"It would hover over the existing hotel, with the roof removed and concrete columns built through the middle of the old building. This will ruin the historic building. It would have significant adverse effects on the heritage values of the hotel."
The hotel has a Category One Historic Places Trust registration.
From the mid-1850s, the Fitzroy operated as a public house. By 1909, it had lost its pub licence and in 1912 it reopened as a boarding house.
In the 1950s to 1960 it was used to produce books and journals. Pilgrim Press and Wakefield Press were based there and works were produced by James K. Baxter, Peter Bland, Barry Crump, Maurice Duggan, A. R. D. Fairburn, Maurice Gee, Allan Curnow, Denis Glover, Kevin Ireland, Olive Johnson, O. E. Middleton, Frank Sargeson, Kendrick Smithyman and Hone Tuwhare. In the 1980s, it housed a string of magazines including Metro.
In 2004, planning consultant John Childs, representing Zhong's company Golden City, argued that resource consents had already been granted to allow the Fitzroy to be demolished and replaced by a 50m-high apartment building.
The building had not been used as a tavern for nearly 100 years and its facade had been altered considerably over the years, from a simple exterior to a more ornate one and then back again, Childs said. He told how there were better examples of 19th century hotels and taverns in the city and said it was not viable to reuse or incorporate the structure into plans for the apartment tower. He cited 14 examples of historic hotels in Auckland's central area and said many looked better than the Fitzroy from the outside.
But Matson said that 15 years ago, Auckland had 44 Victorian or Edwardian corner pubs on a Heritage Week walk and of those, there were now only nine left on the council's schedule. Matson said this was clear evidence that few of this group had survived.
Jeremy Salmond, director of heritage specialists Salmond Reed Architects, said he did not approve of the apartment plan.
"The proposal is unsound in heritage terms and will also result in a profoundly unsatisfactory architectural relationship between the new and existing parts of the development.
"For this reason and because of the likely physical impacts on heritage fabric resulting from the construction process, I consider the effects of the proposal on heritage values to be significantly adverse and inconsistent with the objectives of the district plan for the protection of heritage values associated with scheduled buildings," Salmond said in a letter to Matson last month.
Salmond made an independent assessment of the developer's proposal.
"The proposed development will substantially encroach over the footprint of the heritage building."
Salmond said the Fitzroy was an important heritage building and noted that Auckland City's assessment of it at 72 points was only three points short of the threshold under which it would qualify as a Category A building.
* FITZROY HOTEL
Oldest Auckland inner-city hotel building, built in 1855.
One of Auckland's oldest brick structures.
Once owned by brewer Richard Seccombe.
His business was a Lion Breweries forerunner.
Also once used as a boarding house.
Later a printing/publishing base for significant authors.
