By CR HELEN CRAIG
Jamie Waugh, a passionate advocate for Whanganui, submitted to Council's 10 Year Plan (a worthy late submission — which I was happy to support among other late submissions, by the way) making an impassioned plea for this Council to challenge existing paradigms around the application of Building Act requirements. The Act imposes much higher standards of renovation where a "change of use" is proposed, such as apartments replacing office space.
Jamie is absolutely correct to make this challenge and I'm thrilled he puts aside valuable time to be on the Town Centre Regeneration Committee, as he brings a different perspective on many issues.
Only a few months ago I sat with our Building Control Team Leader Greg Hoobin, new Principal Planner Hamish Lampp and General Manager for Property Leighton Toy on the phone with Dr Glen Hazelton to discuss this very important issue of "how can Council ensure we are correctly interpreting the intent of the Building Act in order to save our heritage buildings?". Glen has extensive experience with the Dunedin City Council on this very topic and is soon to start working for Heritage New Zealand as a valuable resource to wider New Zealand.
I am confident we explored this issue extensively and our Council team is trying to be as flexible as possible. Council values our heritage buildings and wants to encourage their retention. If a legal challenge can give us more tools to help this happen, then I'm all for it. Council is pursing this avenue of enquiry without delay.
Some will be asking the question of why? Why bother saving tired old buildings past their use by date? I hear you and I'm just not an advocate of heritage retention out of some belief in their vague aesthetic value. I've learnt and heard from experts time and again that if we allow old buildings to be demolished because existing owners can't afford to renovate them, or can't sell them for the price they want, then there is a high chance the sites will remain empty — just blank weed-filled spaces in our town centre. Retail shopping is supposed to be in decline, so if we pull down old buildings, what are the chances a developer will see any value in building something new — why bother?
