Homework, heritage and high-density housing discussed at Plan Change 14 hearing

Thursday, 9 November 2023

Susan Schade has asked for Scott St in Sydenham to be classified as a character area.

Christ’s College has been told to do its homework, while a Sydenham resident has asked for heritage protection on herstreet, as an independent panel considers new rules for housing density in Christchurch.

Catherine Boulton, a planner representing Christ's College, told an independent hearings panel why she thought land owned by the school should be rezoned. Principal Garth Wynne and Rob McFarlane, the school’s director of finance and operations, sat behind her.

The panel, in its fifth week of hearing submissions on Christchurch City Council’s proposed Plan Change 14, heard on Wednesday how residents are concerned about losing sunlight access and their quality of life should their neighbourhoods be green-lit for higher density housing.

Christ’s College, represented by planning consultant Catherine Boulton, asked the panel if instead of rezoning the College’s residential land on Gloucester St to medium density residential, it could become a school zone like the rest of its campus.

However, a hearings commissioner and one of Christchurch City Council’s lawyers questioned the relevancy of the request, as the purpose of PC14 is to earmark areas of Christchurch for housing and business development or protection.

Boulton said rezoning 21 Gloucester St (which the school bought in 2019) would be a “logical extension” of the existing campus and would provide certainty to the school’s future growth.

The school was told to do some “homework” and send the panel more evidence later.

Also in the College’s submission, the school opposed parts of its land being included in the council’s proposed inner city west heritage area, as it would restrict development options.

That land - valued at $48.4 million - is dotted with grand old homes and is near the protected buildings of the school itself, Canterbury Museum and the Arts Centre.

Last year, the council gave the school permission to demolish all but two heritage listed buildings on the site by 2027. Boulton told the panel that should be taken into consideration when deciding to classify the area as having heritage value.

However, during a series of tense yes-or-no questions from Christchurch City Council laywer Cedric Carranceja, Boulton conceded that just because they had permission to demolish doesn’t mean the College would definitely do the work.

She also agreed that regardless of future decisions, the area could be considered of heritage value today.

Susanne Schade made the case for her street being protected from medium density development, due to its special character.

Scott St has a number of older character homes which could lose sunlight if taller townhouses are built next door.

Through Carranceja’s questions, he pointed out that should the council rezone 21 Gloucester St to a school zone, the site would no longer be beholden to certain building rules.

Panel member Ian Munro asked Boulton for the specific section of relevant policy which made the College’s Gloucester St request relevant to PC14.

Taller townhouses risk turning Scott St into “a dark, damp street” says a resident.

When Boulton couldn’t produce it, Munro suggested that the College did more “homework” and send the panel that evidence later.

Most residents who spoke on Wednesday were concerned the proposed plan change — which would allow for increased housing density in areas across the city — would negatively impact existing residents, including reducing their access to sunlight.

Sydenham’s Scott St in particular would suffer from medium density zoning, said resident and submitter Susanne Schade.

Schade, who is an architect, said she used the daylight recession plane to calculate that Scott St “would become a dark, damp street. No sunlight at all in winter, maybe during the noon time at 12”.

She believed her street, which had several single-storey historic workers’ cottages, met the criteria for consideration as a protected character area. She said as much as 90% of the properties on the street had features in keeping with the heritage buildings.

The panel was interested to know why the street hadn’t already been earmarked for character or heritage protection in the draft plan, and suggested they would visit it in person.

Several members of the Riccarton Bush Kilmarnock Residents' Association spoke in the afternoon, as part of a submission which was heard for over an hour.

Resident Tim Preston didn’t think it was logical to allow housing intensification outside of the city centre, arguing that other suburban centres would effectively compete with the post-quake rebuild and condemn Christchurch to being “a heartless city”.

He said the plan change process needed to be paused until the new Government was in office, as the National Party had pledged to make the mandatory housing intensification rules which drove PC14 “opt-out”.

There are three more weeks of hearings in 2023, with more submissions to be heard in January and February before the independent panel makes its recommendations to the council.