The residents of Pegasus deserve better

Saturday, 25 July 2026

EDITORIAL: Pegasus was launched with a big flourish a little over 20 years ago as a new kind of planned community in North Canterbury. The thousands who bought homes were surely attracted by the open space, the distance from the city and the proximity to the sea.

They liked the fresh air and the quiet. A lake on one side and a golf course on the other. It felt new and it felt safe.

Not everything that was planned for Pegasus by energetic visionary Bob Robertson has come to pass but the spirit of it has survived, even as the outside world has come closer. Across the motorway at Ravenswood, vast new stretches of suburbia have sprung up, along with some commercial amenities that were missing from Pegasus. But the biggest potential change is coming from inside Pegasus itself.

The world-class 18-hole, 77-hectare golf course that was a selling point in 2006 may be turned into a 1000-home subdivision. This is not just a significant change. It is also a highly unwelcome one.

Some people have been sceptical about Pegasus since it launched. They thought it looked like a gated community, although it was not. The “new urbanist” planning style has been made to look sinister and artificial in movies like The Truman Show and The Stepford Wives.

But the fact is that Pegasus is now home to around 4000 people, and many of them feel their way of life is about to be ruined. The golf course is not just sporting infrastructure but an appealing visual feature, even for those who have never played a round in their lives.

This undermining of the spirit of Pegasus is coming from a housing developer that has failed to engage with the public, potentially aided by a political process that was not designed for this type of project.

After Pegasus Golf Ltd went into liquidation with debts of around $9 million, it was sold to Wolfbrook in May for around $6m-$7m.

The purchase was opportunistic. The golf course has a Special Purpose Zone designation and will require a plan change before it can be built on. In other words, it was not sold as housing land.

More controversially, Wolfbrook is submitting the project next week for urgent approval under the Government’s Fast-track Approvals Act.

The act was designed to cut red tape and speed up infrastructure that has been bogged down in planning and consultation. Or to put it in legal language, the purpose of the act is “to facilitate the delivery of infrastructure and development projects with significant regional or national benefits”.

It is hard to see Wolfbrook’s Pegasus development meeting this criterion.

The claim it would deliver regional benefits is highly questionable. As Waimakariri District Council Mayor Dan Gordon has explained, the council has done its future planning, which was consulted on ahead of its recent district plan. It identified areas of growth that do not include a golf course at Pegasus.

Gordon has argued that developments that sit outside established growth areas in the district plan should not be eligible for the fast-track pathway. That makes sense. While Waimakariri is a fast-growing region, growth must be co-ordinated and planned and Rangiora is the focus.

It has turned into an ugly local stoush. Wolfbrook poured concrete into the holes on the golf course after it had officially closed, to keep would-be golfers off the ground. That seemed petty and antagonistic. And Wolfbrook has not been available to the community and the media.

Local residents have shown they are committed to their community. The Pegasus Residents’ Group presented a 16,000-signature petition to Parliament this week. Waimakariri MP Matt Doocey, whose Government introduced the fast-track legislation but who opposes this particular project, was among those who received it.

The Pegasus story is also doing brand damage to Wolfbrook, a successful Christchurch-based developer which has expanded to Queenstown, Tauranga, Auckland and Dunedin. Communication has been sparse. Both the public and the media are entitled to hear more from a developer behind a project of this magnitude. Some media reports have suggested Wolfbrook could make more than $400m from the planned development.

The downside of rapid, post-earthquake growth in Christchurch, Waimakariri and Selwyn is the threatened erosion of local character, whether it is high-density housing used primarily as holiday rentals in inner-city suburbs or subdivisions in semi-rural communities. This case is at the extreme end.

The thousands of people who chose to live at Pegasus, and are happy there, deserve better.