High rises for Wellington? Height restrictions set to be removed for central city apartment buildings
Friday, 18 June 2021
The sky could be the limit for the central city, with Wellington City Council set to vote next week on a proposal to remove all restrictions on the height of new housing buildings in the CBD and Te Aro.
The idea is among the boldest in the draft spatial plan, the council’s blueprint for creating up to 32,000 new homes to alleviate the housing crisis and put a roof over the heads of the thousands of people expected to move to Wellington over the next 30 years.
Councillors will on Thursday vote on the proposal, which would require new housing buildings to be a minimum of six storeys high, and would remove the upper limit, currently 60 metres or about 20 storeys.
“I think it's good. The city has to go up,” said councillor Rebecca Matthews, an advocate for higher density housing.
She described the proposal as a “bright spot in a plan that in lots of ways is quite disappointing”. “It's not enabling enough housing and I don't think it provides for the growth that we need,” she said.
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The proposed changes are part of a city-wide plan to accommodate up to 80,000 extra residents over the next three decades, including up to 18,000 in the central city.
Under current growth plans, the council would face a shortfall of between 4600 and 12,000 homes over the next 30 years.
“This plan will see a city that is transformed from Tawa all the way to Island Bay,” said the council’s chief planning officer, Liam Hodgetts.
But the most drastic changes are set to occur in the central city, with the CBD and Te Aro to be the “flagship” areas of change. “We know that the central city is an area that we’d like growth to occur,” Hodgetts said.
The council’s draft spatial plan wwas changed significantly last year following the introduction of a government policy directing councils to provide enough development to meet housing demand.
Councillor Diane Calvert said she was undecided about whether she supported no limits on inner-city housing buildings.
“We have to provide for more housing, but it's how we do it, and I don't know whether we've quite got the ‘how’ right,” she said. “We've got to think about the amenities available within the city. We've got to think about the green space that we need, and we've got to think about sunlight on the streets.”
After listening to public feedback on the spatial plan, council officers have recommended a bunch of changes to the plan, including expanding the area where building heights would be unrestricted. They now recommend including Te Aro, as well as the section of Adelaide Rd in Newtown between Rugby St and Riddiford St, and properties in the vicinity of Selwyn Tce and Portland Cres.
Some parts of the central city would still have limits, , such as Cuba St because of its heritage qualities, and Thorndon Quay because of hazard risks. The area encompassing parts of Hobson St, Hobson Cres, and Turnbull St had also been omitted because of its residential and character qualities.
Plans would be developed to protect views and sunlight in public spaces, and manage development next to open spaces and heritage areas.
Meanwhile, council offices have suggested offsetting plans to expand protected character areas in many inner-city suburbs – such as Mt Cook, Mt Victoria, and Newtown – by allowing higher buildings in non-protected parts of these suburbs.
That would mean, for example, that future developments in protected parts of Mt Victoria would be restricted to a maximum of three storeys, but “non-heritage” parts could have buildings twice that height. The initial plans proposed maximum heights of just four storeys outside the protected areas.
The revised spatial plan still contains allowances for buildings up to eight storeys high in the Johnsonville and Kilbirnie town centres.
However, Hodgetts said the council was in discussions with Johnsonville Shopping Centre owner Stride Property about allowing higher, mixed-use buildings to be developed at the site and on surrounding sites owned by the company.
Stride Property has long promised to redevelop the ailing mall, and last year requested consent for an 18-storey development on the site.