Uglies: Black-tie at 715 George

715 George St, corner Regent Rd, Dunedin

█ Clan Construction Commercial Ltd
http://www.companies.govt.nz/co/4013678

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### ODT Online Thu, 10 Dec 2015
Student apartments going up
Construction has begun on six new student apartments at the corner of George St and Regent Rd, Dunedin. The 962sq m triangular-shaped site is owned by Straits International Ltd, and was the site of a service station for about 80 years. The Dunedin City Council has given resource consent for the company to construct four residential units in a two-storey building (block 1) and two residential units in a three-storey building (block 2), thereby creating 22 habitable rooms. Construction is expected to be completed next year.
ODT Link

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Comments at ODT Online:

Student apartments
Submitted by Barnaby on Thu, 10/12/2015 – 6:35pm.

No! This was not a service station site for 80 years. There was a beautiful two-storey substantial brick heritage house on this site until about the 1970s. This is just another step in the incremental loss of North End heritage. This shows very poor planning from DCC, making this part of town, and the main street in this case, an ever expanding precinct of badly designed cheaply built high density housing. These will add to the stock of other similar structures forming “North Dunedin’s slums of the future”. Ratepayers’ will probably end up funding the future purchase of such cheap accomodation to mitigate associated social problems and the appalling visual amenity. Very poor city planning indeed.

Habitable room disasters
Submitted by ej kerr on Fri, 11/12/2015 – 12:43pm.

Prominent George St corner sites are being trashed by the banal. More habitable rooms – No emphasis on good contemporary design, no flair.
This one’s built right to the footpath on the main street, with little modulation and no hint of garden or vertical planting possible, except something to the corner part-screened by the witless bus shelter shoved on its concrete pad.
Given the rich inheritance, where has Dunedin street architecture gone? Where are the design professions? Why so much visual erosion? Where is the NZ Institute of Architects? Why no City Architect Office and independent Urban Design Panel to uphold design values for Dunedin residents and ratepayers?
Ugh! DCC planning fail. DCC urban design fail. DCC district plan fail. When will DCC grow up – to promote sympathetic edgy contemporary architecture and design for major city axials, at the very least. A step up from turning Dunedin into bog city with tawdry gateway approaches.

Related Posts and Comments:
[distasteful]
6.1.14 George Street: Two new uglies (thanks DCC, no City Architect…)

[sensitive]
9.1.14 Facadism: 3%, 10%, 50%, 75%, 99.9% (how much is enough) | University of Otago warps Castle Street

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

*Image: misted lettered tweaked by whatifdunedin

*Surprise!* Farry’s f.u.b.a.r. Stadium not attracting first year Efts

BLUNDER CITY #DUD —AND THE STADIUM REVIEW AIN’T NO HELP

Ivy League Assaults: Dumber and Dumber due to UE failure, drunkenness, fires, civil disorder, better campus and study offerings up north and overseas?

AWAIT UNIVERSITY OF OTAGO PRONOUNCEMENTS AFTER THE MARCH MEETING OF THE HALLOWED UNIVERSITY COUNCIL

A ‘PUBLIC RELATIONS EPIC’ IS EXPECTED

### ODT Online Tue, 10 Mar 2015
University roll worry realised
By Timothy Brown
Fears of University of Otago first-year student numbers falling for the first time since 2011 appear to be realised, with “serious” vacancies at Knox College and Salmond College. About 10% of beds at the two non-university run colleges remain vacant and the Otago University Students’ Association revealed, earlier this year, the University of Otago could face a drop in first-year student numbers.
Read more

Both Knox and Salmond have undergone recent building upgrades and provide excellent pastoral care in quiet settings – who then, would choose a university-owned rough-house college if you were serious about career education.

What sort of undergrad student is the University of Otago attracting nowadays? Party animals? Generation Zero lefties? Discount ivy-leaguers (Kiwi-Asian style)? And how come accommodation at college halls is so steep? It’s an obscene weekly cost if mummy and daddy aren’t paying, so yes, way better(?) to camp out in the grunge and gunge flats of Studentville —or hey, move up the hill to sink the tone of City Rise, look at all those “historic-kick-apart” villas and mansions, incredibly suited to Face Book parties and upsetting middle class owner-occupiers next door. Cripes, at each former family or professional home there’s room to park “6 cars!”, yes, the cash-cow landlords will happily (just ask) destroy established 100-year-old plantings and gardens to lay down asphalt.

Welcome to ‘Absolutely Beautiful’, Dunedin. Welcome to the student ghettos, the broken streetscapes…. smashed bottles, lingering trash, burnt furniture, bouncing basketballs (all hours, Really Dumb like that), drying vomit and worse, weeds, untrimmed trees and hedges, a few kicked-in fences, more asphalt, flaking paint at once proud residences, stickering with satellite dishes and heat pumps, strings of poorly washed laundry draping house fronts. But who can forget the “Dunedin Sound”, of nights, drunken male yahoos, uncoordinated white trash hakas and ‘young girl’ screams, passion or torture, hard to tell. 111.

THIS is, Dunedin FOR Education.
Student loans FOR Banks and Slum Landlords.
Google Images: “castle street hyde street dunedin”

And Harlene, next! Frat Life starts in on St Leonards – just a quick ride from your Ivy League of diminished offerings, that overpriced BA, BCom or BSc.

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Related Posts and Comments:
18.2.15 University of Otago: Toga Party 2015 #video
16.2.15 University of Otago can’t beat broadcast news and social media #image
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12.8.14 Cameras in North Dunedin
1.8.14 University Partyville, North Dunedin: Put the cameras in ~!!
16.7.14 Stadium: Out of the mouths of uni babes…. #DVML
30.4.14 Octagon mud
22.3.14 Dunedin North care less filthy slum
19.3.14 Dunedin North drunks
15.2.14 University of Otago: Starter questions for Harlene
10.2.14 University of Otago major sponsor for Highlanders
19.8.13 Cull on senility (firing up graduates)
25.3.13 UoO: NEGATIVE PRESS: Weekly disorder in Dunedin campus area
20.2.12 University of Otago student orientation
17.2.12 Salvation Army: The Growing Divide
17.12.11 Stadium + Cull love = University of Otago + OUSA party
23.11.11 Judge Oke Blaikie finally said it
9.11.11 DCC has PR problem

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

University of Otago can’t beat broadcast news and social media #image

[click screenshot to enlarge]

This is how New Zealand Herald, via the National news section (it’s an ODT story and photograph by Hamish McNeilly), markets the University of Otago Campus Area to parents and intending students, nationals and internationals. Read the full article at NZ Herald.

Better advertising to reduce Otago’s student rolls we couldn’t hope to find.

Glad Vice-chancellor Harlene Hayne has everything under control.
Perhaps the VC could visit and apologise to the distressed student from George Street, hard at work today serving customers at the Octagon, who told me she and her flatmates ventured out on Sunday morning to find their driveway grossly awash with vomit.

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Related Posts and Comments:
18.12.14 University of Otago —um Harlene, what you sellin’ now, girl?
12.8.14 Cameras in North Dunedin
1.8.14 University Partyville, North Dunedin: Put the cameras in ~!!
16.7.14 Stadium: Out of the mouths of uni babes…. #DVML
30.4.14 Octagon mud
22.3.14 Dunedin North care less filthy slum
19.3.14 Dunedin North drunks
15.2.14 University of Otago: Starter questions for Harlene
10.2.14 University of Otago major sponsor for Highlanders
19.8.13 Cull on senility (firing up graduates)
25.3.13 UoO: NEGATIVE PRESS: Weekly disorder in Dunedin campus area
20.2.12 University of Otago student orientation
17.2.12 Salvation Army: The Growing Divide
17.12.11 Stadium + Cull love = University of Otago + OUSA party
23.11.11 Judge Oke Blaikie finally said it
9.11.11 DCC has PR problem

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

Cameras in North Dunedin

Received from Lee Vandervis
Tue, 12 Aug 2014 at 11:05am

Message: The email below is what I sent to Critic in direct response to their questions as further below. Critic editor Zane Pocock’s ‘Editorial’ fails to include any of my responses and instead fabricates false quotations. [see even further below]
I did not say “prevent vandalism” or “I don’t trust you little fuckers”, but Mr Pocock’s ‘Editorial’ gives reason enough.

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—— Forwarded Message
From: Lee Vandervis
Date: Wed, 06 Aug 2014 20:41:00 +1200
To: Nina Harrap [Critic]
Conversation: Cameras in North Dunedin
Subject: Re: Cameras in North Dunedin

Hi Nina,

For decades, various attempts to stop couch-burning in public streets have been ineffective, and ratepayers should not be forced to carry the annual burden of hundreds of thousands in repair costs, to say nothing of the equally unaffordable costs of fire-fighting staff, Police and ambulance services.
Video is now a very inexpensive way to combat unaffordable criminal vandalism hot-spots, but Dunedin North has been exempted for various spineless reasons. A very few pyromaniac vandals have been taking advantage of this exemption, some of them students.
The Police would have access to the camera surveillance as they do in many other parts of Dunedin. I would anticipate that the Police would act with prosecutions only on evidence of serious criminal offending.
Cameras would not be an invasions of residents’ privacy as they would be in public places where anybody with a cell phone could also record similar images. Cameras would not need to focus on any residential property as they are concerned with protecting public spaces.
Mr Baxter has suggested that I would not like cameras recording outside my house. The opposite is true. If cameras had been recording, there might have been a chance of catching the tagger who made an expensive mess on a vehicle parked in the street last month.

Kind regards,
Cr. Vandervis.

On 5/08/14 9:00 PM, “Nina Harrap” wrote:

Hello Mr Vandervis,
My name’s Nina Harrap and I’m a reporter for Critic magazine. I’m currently writing a short piece about your proposal to install cameras around North Dunedin. I was wondering if I could possibly get a statement from you in answer to the following questions:
Why do you feel cameras in North Dunedin are a good idea?
Who will have access to the camera surveillance?
Won’t putting cameras up be an invasion of residents’ privacy?

My deadline is 5pm tomorrow (Wednesday), so your speedy reply is very much appreciated.

Cheers,
Nina [for Critic]

—— End of Forwarded Message

[Critic text article supplied. Header and image – screenshot by whatifdunedin]

As reported by the ODT on Friday 1 August, Dunedin city councillor Lee Vandervis has called for video surveillance of Scarfie-ville to “prevent vandalism”.

There is a huge problem with this, and it’s because of how much students have improved their behaviour recently. Largely driven by a great effort from both the University and OUSA over the last few years, students have been working hard to correct a past prevalence of misdemeanours, all the while maintaining Dunedin’s reputation as an exciting place to grow up as young, energetic adults. The Hyde Street Party is now a well-controlled and safe event for students to let their energy off. Orientation is similar. Furthermore, the Dunedin Craft Beer and Food Festival even sees an effort by the students to provide something for the much wider community of Dunedin.

It has been a huge and noticeable improvement, and people like Vandervis undermine that. The clear progress in student culture needs to be encouraged. Taking several years of steady improvements before turning around and saying “I don’t trust you little fuckers” through a targeted invasion of privacy is counter-intuitive and stupid.

Vandervis is looking for a silver bullet when there is none. What there is, however, is a huge cohort of students who really do care about preserving the student culture of Dunedin. No, that doesn’t strictly mean binge drinking and fire starting. What it means is the conservation of a true student quarter and the existence of a true student town in New Zealand. Dunedin’s half dead without the University – the commonly held belief is that there’s not much else aside from the culture here to attract students.

As for privacy itself, the age-old argument that you don’t have to worry if you’ve got nothing to hide should have been abandoned long ago. One of the many oppositional points to this comes down to the sheer confusing nature of law. To the best of my knowledge, one of the reasons we have a judicial system is that a lot of legislative law is extremely convoluted, and a very large portion of our law is based on precedents set by judges’ decisions and not strictly written as rules, which is the common way of seeing law. Although our situation isn’t as confusing as that in the States where they literally can’t count the number of federal crimes that exist, it’s hard to actually know whether you live within the confines of the law or not.

And again, with reference to the States, sometimes people should have something to hide. Sometimes people should be breaking the law to amount pressure on lawmakers. Only in 2001 did Minnesota decriminalise sodomy, and thus, to a large degree, homosexuality. How about marijuana – there wouldn’t even be spokespeople for the huge positive change currently sweeping the States if people hadn’t lived illegally against an outdated and one-sided conservative belief system.

I also struggle to trust humans. People watching the camera footage will almost surely abuse their positions. They will laugh at people and they will put footage on YouTube (even though this would be illegal itself). This rounds out my final point: why can’t we have privacy for the sake of privacy? It’s fair to object to an invasion of privacy without even thinking about why you’re objecting to it. Going by Vandervis’ logic, should there perhaps then be a camera in each cubicle of any Octagon bar? The deadly assault earlier this year scared the shit out of a lot of people.

Otherwise, fuck it. You think students are apathetic? Just wait until power-tripping aggression makes things worse. I would hazard a guess that you’ll need even more security cameras keeping track of the student-spying ones.

Zane Pocock
Critic Editors

—— End of Forwarded Message

█ Source: http://www.critic.co.nz/columns/article/4231/editorial–issue-19
Editorial | Posted 9:16pm Sunday 10 August 2014 by Zane Pocock.

Related Post and Comments:
1.8.14 University Partyville, North Dunedin: Put the cameras in ~!!

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

George Street: Two new uglies (thanks DCC, no City Architect…)

(just DCC resource management planners with no design training, and use of the odd ‘consulting architect’ who lamely fails to press that architectural details be made “right”, lest they upset “the boys”—be they lousy small-time architects (as opposed to REAL DESIGN ARCHITECTS), architectural designers, draftsmen, builders, property developers or investors). Our kindom, for a City Architect —to compile and enforce design guidelines, and through district plan mechanisms, to require the use of registered architects by developers working in important townscape precincts like George Street, and to shove an unforgiving multidisciplinary Urban Design Panel at the buggers.

No. 1 —Apartments, 581 George Street
We’re all familiar with Farry’s Motel, now Farry’s Motel Apartments at 575 George Street. The complex used to look out on a green area, and vehicle parking with mature trees and shrubbery at 581.

DCC Webmap 575-581 George Street

Malcolm Farry recently sold the properties at 575 and 581 to Ethel Limited, a family company led by Frank Cazemier who has worked for Cutlers as a “University Investment Sales Specialist”. A cursory check of directorships at the NZ Companies Office website shows Cazemier is “one of the boys”. Pity he knows next to nothing about contextual commercial residential design, architectural bulk and location, facade modulation, sun angles, or landscape architecture —such that can’t be solved by ready trees.

Farry’s Motel Apartments now looks out on a poorly designed featureless boundary fence, and the sobering double block of apartments ‘next door’ at 581. The block furthest from the street (walls of light blue), when seen from driveways to either side, reveals a ‘long elevation’ running parallel to George Street that resembles a jerry-built, badly-windowed reclad of a tired country hall (the low, horizontally-orientated fenestration allows for another floor of rooms above, in the roofspace).

The marketing statement for Farry’s Motel Apartments at 575 still says:
“Set alongside a large grassed area that provides a playground and picnic spots, we are one of the most centrally located Dunedin motels, offering an absolutely superb main street position.”

This is no longer the case.
The very likely expensive exercise in ‘infill design’ (intensification/ densification…) issued from the drawing board of Bill Henderson, Architect of (fuck-a-daisy)WANAKA —someone who appears to work at the ‘cheap-looking’ end of the market, or at least has diminished design flare, poor knowledge of scale detail and proportion, and lack of expertise in three-dimensional architectural composition. As a result, and while meeting planning criteria for the zone, the motels/apartments at 575 and 581 now look about fit for student stays only, or at a pinch, the G&T parents of capping graduands. No fear, the new apartments will be mouth-wateringly expensive to rent. The student ghetto continues, behind the tacky dress-up to George Street.

Incidently, Farry’s operates a charge back system with the former Farry-owned Cargill’s Hotel, now Quality Hotel Cargills at 686 George Street.

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No. 2 —Apartments, 2 St David Street, cnr George Street
There used to be a nice old single-storey bungalow with fine curving bay windows and a palm tree on this site, next to Quality Hotel Cargills. Only the palm tree remains. The bungalow became victim to an excavator. It isn’t clear if the windows and internal period joinery (if still present) were dismantled for re-use.

The site is now owned by Newmarket Investments Limited and has been recently developed for apartments. The company directors are Clive Hewitson and wife Wendy May Hewitson. Clive Hewitson’s profile at LinkedIn says: “Director – Otago & Southland, New Zealand | Real Estate”. Hewitson is another of the “boys”, as records at the NZ Companies Office show. Some link up in the past with companies of which Frank Cazemier (mentioned above) has also been a director.

The apartment complex is faced, not too convincingly, in ‘red brick’ – at first glance, no-one can tell if it’s real brick facing or veneer! Questionable are the lack of reveals, and the scale and position of openings (doors and windows) in the street elevations; with tweaking to proportions and placements this could have solved. The glazing bars are wrong. Small frosted bathroom and toilet windows to the street (on the public face of your building) are a No-no. The shallowness of the gables to the street elevations, also grates in perspective. The grey wooden pickets added to the base of the original garden fence are odd. The whole is unnecessarily dreary. Taxi drivers hate it. The pencil cypresses may provide a foil, once mature (the building really needs one hell of a lot of ivy). Have to admit, designing anything between Quality Hotel Cargills and Econo Lodge Alcala is a free-for-all, BUT why not try…

No registered architect. It shows. The developer used RJ Oliver Architectural Design, Mosgiel – spot the spelling mistake!

Why didn’t Quality Hotel Cargills buy 2 St David Street to take control of the prominent corner to George Street? We note Dunedin architect Hamish Wixon is a director/shareholder of 678 George Street Limited and Cargills Hotel Limited. Perhaps we can look forward to developments at the tired Cargills…

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Strategic Site: 715 George Street, cnr Regent Road
Can we possibly imagine what will get built on the site of the former BP 2go Regent service station? Another horror story? Another ‘architectual’ (sic) bodice-ripper? 715 is owned by Northfield Property and Investment Company Limited. The sole director is Bryan Howard Usher of Dunedin.

DCC Webmap – 715 George Street (context)

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Post and building images by Elizabeth Kerr

Carisbrook and Leith flood protection

Received from Rob Hamlin.
Monday, 27 May 2013 1:03 p.m.

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Carisbrook on Sunday (26.5.13)

A picture of doomed dereliction – Innit? I tried to take photos of this last week, but the weather wasn’t good enough. I seem to recall that the comb lines in the manicured grass were going in a different direction then, indicating that further ratepayer-funded pampering has occurred this last week. What earthly reason can there be for the DCC to be spending money doing this on a structure that they claim they have a) sold and b) issued a demo permit for? Some seats are missing (but could be inside). The lights are gone, but Delta bought the last set anyway so why not ‘play it again Sam’?

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Otago Regional Council – Leith Flood Protection Scheme

001 ‘Sad Sacking’
The results of the equally seawall-like doomed attempts by the ORC and their representatives to establish a million dollar[?] lawn in the middle of winter in the bottom of a drainage channel occupied by a major flood prone waterway (the Leith). An act of simply heroic lunacy. This is the aftermath of the minor flood last week. The proto-lawn is covered in sacking further up the river, except for the bit next to the water – that’s now wrapped around the post in the foreground. Luckily it did not end up in the harbour – although many tons of silt presumably did. No doubt the ORC will be able to issue itself with a retrospective resource consent for this uncontrolled discharge into the environment.

002, 004 ‘Washed away’
For weeks now and presumably at great expense to the ORC, the contractors (Lund if the site signs are to be believed) have been laying down what looks like micropore mat, hexagon reinforcement, and what looks like a very expensive chicken wire plastic mesh combo – stitched together. They then planted grass on it. This can be seen growing feebly on the slope in 002. Alas, the minor flood that dislodged the sacking also gently sluiced out the soil and grass from the expensively-laid reinforcements on the level parts of the lawn laid (lunacy) right up to the edge of the river.

000 gives a higher angle shot showing the artistry of this now exposed and empty (of soil) soil stabilisation system, along with the feeble grass above it. I am not sure how they will reposition the soil into this stuff short of ripping it up and starting again. Presumably if all this expensive stuff was intended to stop soil coming out, it will be equally good at resisting attempts to put it back in again by mechanical means. Oh dear!

003 ‘Mighty defences’
Here we have what is actually supposed to keep the Leith in the straight and narrow from now on. This is the concrete shuttering for an incomplete part of the bank (this shuttering is now filled with shyte from the flood). The wall when poured (one hopes after clearing out said shyte) will be a worthy successor to the St Clair seawall – it is about 12 inches tall and 8 inches thick. It is plastered onto the top of (rather than onto the front of as with the seawall) the remains of its more substantial predecessor. The lawn (in the areas where it used to be there) starts directly behind it…

005 ‘Classy concrete placing’
The mighty foot-high defences take an interesting course in the photograph taken looking up the left-hand bank from the Forth Street Bridge. I do not know if this feature-bulge in the mighty wall is the outcome of a molar-like architectural design feature to increase the organic appearance of the site or if it’s simply a concrete shuttering quality control issue. It’s your rates money – you decide.

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

*Photos: Rob Hamlin (May 2013)

Judge Oke Blaikie finally said it

The Judge has spoken out, well ahead of the Vice-Chancellor who remains officially ‘mum’. He’s not saying this out of left field – we’re ALL disgusted with the fires caused by the students’ lawless behaviour in our public streets; and with the lack of collective responsibility shown by the University of Otago and City authorities.

It is intolerable that Dunedin emergency services, performing their roles responsibly, are having to bear the major burden year in year out.

The University of Otago Council plonkers and senior ‘ivy-leaguers’ need a wake-up call. Too shrouded in their own mist and comfy salaries, every one an island? Precious loves.

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### ODT Online Wed, 23 Nov 2011
Fears publicity harming varsity
By Matthew Haggart
The University of Otago might face a decline similar to Otago’s sports teams, as a combination of regional demographics, tertiary underfunding, and ongoing publicity about student unrest hit home, a university council member has predicted. The comments from Judge Oke Blaikie came out of left field at a university council meeting yesterday during a discussion on the institution’s budget for 2012. Judge Blaikie, who is also chairman of the university’s disciplinary appeals board, said ongoing publicity about student unrest and fires was contributing to a negative perception among parents of potential students.
Read more

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

DCC has PR problem

The Octagon Occupy (a peaceful legitimate protest) and the weekend’s North Dunedin fires (arson, threat to property, drunkenness and street fighting, threat to health and safety) are exerting pressure on the Dunedin City Council to enter meaningful – open and transparent – communication with residents and ratepayers; evidently, this should extend to the university and the police.

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The protesters have won a significant victory and it will be even more difficult to move them now.

### ODT Online Wed, 9 Nov 2011
Editorial: Communication breakdown
Have the Dunedin City Council and senior police officers stopped talking to each other? After last Tuesday night’s public relations disaster when the council failed in its attempt to have trespassed protesters removed from the Octagon, the residents of Dunedin could well be forgiven for thinking sensible communication has ceased. The “Occupy Dunedin” protesters – some call them noble and brave and others bludgers and beneficiaries – pitched more than 30 tents in the upper Octagon on October 15, joining a global movement protesting corporate greed and social inequality and calling for greater protection of the environment.
Read more

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Related Posts:
19.10.11 Octagon protest occupies minds!
21.10.11 INSANE, Dave! Occupy Dunedin STAYS in the Octagon.
24.10.11 #Occupy #OWS Good guy! US Marine Sgt Shamar Thomas

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr