Cookie cutter housing is fast becoming the crop du jour on the Waimea Plains, once fiercely guarded as Tasman’s most productive soil. The council is now planning to make space for a further 2000 houses, as demand outstrips long-term planning by decades. Tracy Neal reports.
Tasman is building houses faster than any point in its history, says mayor Tim King.
“It is astonishing – the amount of growth and demand, and that’s when there’s currently little in the way of immigration. A lot of it is internal migration from places like Auckland.”
Land re-zoned 15 years ago in Richmond west, to accommodate residential, commercial and industrial growth for half a century, will be used up within the next five years. A record 633 building consents for new homes in Tasman were issued in the 12 months to May 2021.
According to the joint Tasman and Nelson councils’ development strategy, the number of houses they must now provide for over the next three decades has leapt 65 per cent, in just three years.
“We were looking to provide 14,500 new homes over the next 30 years, but the new estimate is now up to 24,000 new homes across Nelson-Tasman with a particular focus on the Nelson-Richmond urban area.
“That is a significant increase on what we looked at three years ago,” says King.
The pathway is the Tasman District Council’s recently released plan for “Reimagining Richmond South”. It lays the foundation for how it might provide about 2000 new homes within the next 20 years. Despite it being only early days, at least one homeowner within the proposed extension zone says the process is already well down the track.
Ian Phyn says notification that his home of 22 years is to be taken from him under the Public Works Act, initially made him feel sick.
He says an independent contractor and a council representative on the Richmond South project walked up his driveway a couple of months ago and advised him and his wife they had until the end of April next year to find a new home.
“We had an inkling that a strip of our land would be needed, but when they told us they would be taking the whole property we were like stunned mullets.
“I’ve got an empty section on one side and a car park on the other, yet they want my place.”
Phyn’s ageing bungalow, arrangement of sheds and a glasshouse sits on a decent parcel of land beside the main road in and out of Richmond. He understands his home and property is needed for the planned sewerage network upgrade.
A council spokesperson Chris Choat says negotiations using the Public Works Act are underway to purchase the property, but nothing is finalised. He says the owner appears to be a willing seller.
“We are not marching in to take the property off him. We have identified it would be a good place and we are negotiating with him.”
Choat says the property would be needed for a pumping station for the planned extension of the sewerage network.
Phyn says he has come to terms with the situation, and maybe it’s time to consolidate but he’s not looking forward to the task of finding a new place in this super-heated market.
His neighbour, Steve Hensley, runs a mini golf course and is unhappy with the idea of an electric pump station and “shit ponds” about 25m from his back door.
Hensley, who attended one of the recent public engagement sessions held by the council, reckons they were merely window dressing for what has already been largely confirmed.
“The open day was half a dozen posters stuck on the wall and council staff walking around asking us if we had any ideas and what we thought they should do.
“I think a lot more has been planned which hasn’t been disclosed.”
Hensley is also considering his options but knows he’s sitting pretty on land he bought 35 years ago for $100,000 that is now worth several million dollars.
Portions of the original 7000 sq m site have since been carved off and sold, leaving him to fend-off multiple approaches of late for the remaining 5000 sqm.
“It was the site of a former sawmill. Yes, I’ve had notification the land might be a potential hazardous site, but I’ve dug all sorts of holes for the golf course, and I’ve never found a thing wrong.”
He’s considering selling up and moving somewhere well distant from the din of constant traffic, and a planned sewerage pumping station.
This is the clue as to why this portion of the plains is the preferred location for new housing – hooking up to existing infrastructure rather than building a whole new, massively expensive network.
The Mayor, Tim King, says there were proposals put forward for development on less productive land, but they weren’t going to be successful in terms of attracting a share of the Government’s contestable Infrastructure Acceleration Fund – a key part of its $3.8 billion Accelerated Housing Fund.
Tasman and Nelson City are lumped in the same market when it comes to bidding; and Nelson City currently has the inside track on securing investment for multiple developments.
“And yes, it’s also cheaper to build on flat land,” says King.
“There are locations outside this flat land, but the infrastructure isn’t there. There’s significant cost in starting afresh in new locations.”
Converting productive land for housing is not unique to Tasman – it’s going on in many parts of the country, but what growers say is different in Tasman is its relatively small amount of productive land, especially that which is flat in a region flanked by hills and mountains.
Less than three percent of the district’s land is considered productive, of which the Waimea Plains is about one per cent. The qualities of the plains’ sun-warmed alluvial soils were recognised by the first Māori to arrive around 800 years ago, and by European settlers many centuries later.
“It’s death by 1000 cuts,” says Julian Raine, a grower of all things from trees to dairy cows and boysenberries.
He’s worried by what’s happening, and where it might end.
“It’s just gouging the food producing areas which give us the crops we need for a good balanced diet, so why would you keep building more houses and roads on the most highly productive land in the region?”
He knows that trying to protect farmland from development is like trying to stop an incoming tide. The Raine family’s heritage dairy farm, Oaklands, which generations of the family have run for almost 180 years, sits on the boundary of Nelson City and Tasman District. Development encroaching from each side has made it close to impossible to continue farming.
“We’re commercial farmers in the middle of town and quite frankly, people don’t want us, but yes, they want the milk we produce.”
Raine is also director of the New Zealand Boysenberry Council and operates land blocks across the Waimea Plains. Nelson is the country’s largest boysenberry producer, but its once juicy 5000 tonnes of fruit grown annually has been squeezed down to about 2000 tonnes a year.
“We’ve come off the heady heights, but New Zealand still grows the best boysenberries in the world.”
Boysenberry New Zealand (the cooperative) exports to 55 customers in 11 countries, but New Zealand now competes with the US and Chile for global boysenberry markets.
Berry Lands Estate in Appleby, just south of Richmond, is owned by the Conning family. It is among the last remaining berry farms close to an urban centre, and one of only very few remaining where the public can drop in to pick their own berries.
Simon Conning says new housing estates are closing in on their boundary. He says the land has become too valuable to have cows chewing on it, or in their case, berries growing on it. He’s not sure how much longer they can hold on, and that while landowners have a choice over whether to sell up or stay put, it’s not viable to grow crops on rural land re-zoned as residential, because of the rating structure.
Tim King says a rates remission policy exists to cover this point on re-zoned land.
“It means if people continue to farm it, and don’t develop it they can apply for rates remissions.”
King is at pains to explain the trap councils are in. He says rules around the Rural 1 zone the proposed extension sits in haven’t gone away. What has changed is that councils are subjected to a whole lot of new pressures, including the national policy statement on urban development, which requires them to set out 20 to 30-year approaches on how they are going to provide houses.
“We have to provide the capacity by law, and we can’t stop people wanting to come here.”
King is also worried that despite the rapid increase in supply, affordability is not being impacted to any degree.
“That might change in future, but it’s a huge challenge for a region with relatively low productivity, high reliance on primary industries and relatively low household incomes.”
King says of course more houses mean more income from rates and development contributions, but the cost to provide the associated services are astronomical.
“In the interim you’re borrowing enormous sums of money to provide the money upfront.”
Julian Raine says development needs to go on to low-value land, further towards Wakefield or in the Moutere Hills.
“We have to keep the plains for food, and if I’m brutally honest, not for urban development and lifestyle block holders - they’re the worst, they want four hectares to run three sheep and a horse, with no clue what to do with the rest of the land.”
As the December sun beats down on Golden Hills Road, where berries ripen in the dense, chocolate brown Waimea Plains soil, Julian mops sweat from his brow and says it might soon be time to retire.
* Footnote: The Nelson and Tasman councils released news on December 20 that they have assessed 200 potential sites for growth across the wider region. The areas were identified by planning consultants, landowners and developers, and based on public feedback to the Nelson Tasman 2021-2051 Future Development Strategy. In the Tasman District, 154 sites were suggested, including growth areas outside the urban environment including Tapawera, Murchison and Golden Bay. In Nelson, 46 sites were assessed, with seven new areas additional to those identified in the 2019 Future Development Strategy.
*Made with the help of the Public Interest Journalism Fund *
