Commercial residential, 143-193 Moray Place : ODT bias, ignores arguments of opposing legal experts

THUS we gather that the owners/editorial team of the Otago Daily Times have deemed Anthony Tosswill’s proposal for a tall fat Moray Place apartment building (commercial residential) is worthy of being built. Ra Ra ODT.

If you (ODT) want to print half the story, presume away…. to Not be the independent courier of what is public information contrary to the arguments of the greying Mr Page, Counsel for Mr Tosswill’s NZ Horizons Hospitality Group Ltd (widely suspected as a vehicle for Asian finance, yet to bring even one of “12 hotels” on his South Island wish list out of the ground – funny that).

For your attention :
The legal submissions of Ms Semple, Counsel for Millennium and Copthorne Hotels New Zealand Ltd (owner of the 3 star Kingsgate), an affected party.

Ms Semple maintains that the application cannot be lawfully unbundled.

█ Legal Submissions on behalf of the Millennium and Copthorne Hotels
█ Casebook for the Millennium and Copthorne Hotels

The legal submissions of Mr Hardie, Counsel for Misbeary Holdings Ltd are not yet available online at the DCC website.

[click to enlarge]

LOLOL

At Facebook:

If the independent commissioners agree with Mr Page then it’s “See you in Court, Buster”.

—

Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

This post is offered in the public interest.

Uglies: Black-tie at 715 George

715 George St, corner Regent Rd, Dunedin

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

—

### 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

—

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

—

Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

*Image: misted lettered tweaked by whatifdunedin

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.

****

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…

****

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)

—

Post and building images by Elizabeth Kerr

University buys LivingSpace Dunedin

Received by email.

Monday, 15 April 2013 4:09 p.m.
The workers were told at a meeting today, LivingSpace (the accommodation block in Castle Street, used to be Glendermids) has been sold to the university.

It was the only profitable one of the chain, propping up the lousy Invercargill/Christchurch ones.

The company has been in receivership for quite a while, during which the Dunedin business was steadily busy and AFAIK profitable.

Wtf is the university doing with yet another (no rates I suppose) building? More student accommodation? Landlords will be thrilled.

Could be a challenge to the harbourside accommodation block too.

Cleaning staff have been given the heave-ho.

—

Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

Proposed hotel, 41 Wharf Street – indicative landscape effects

The following images (scans of scans…) were supplied by Madeleine Lamont in submission on application LUC-2012-212. The text of Madeleine’s submission has been lightly edited for posting. Her submission as lodged (No. 422) can be viewed here: Submissions 401 to 509 (PDF, 6.9 MB).

1. View from Mornington Park, off Eglinton Rd between Stafford and High Sts

2. (zoom) View from Mornington Park, off Eglinton Rd

3. View from Bellevue St, Belleknowes, just below Highgate

4. View from Adam St, near Russell St, City Rise

—

Submission to Dunedin City Council
Re: Public Notice of application for Resource Consent Section 95A Resource Management Act 1991
Resource Consent Application No: LUC-2012-212
Name of Applicant: Betterways Advisory Limited
Location of Site: 41 Wharf Street, Dunedin, being the land legally described as
Lot 3 Deposited Plan 25158, held in Computer Freehold
Register OT17A/1107.

I submit in the strongest terms, that resource consent for the building of the proposed hotel structure on the above site, NOT BE GRANTED because of the structure’s significant, detrimental effects on the city landscape.

If the applicant had had the courtesy to supply comprehensive spatial design drawings of this structure in the context of the whole city, it would be obvious to all how inappropriate in SCALE this structure is. At 96m in elevation, the structure overbears the entire city and harbour basin, obstructing the entire city centre’s experience of the harbour, the peninsula and Dunedin’s nestling hills, offering an absurd conflict with the human scale and nature of both the historic and current character of city structures and city activities.

Of greatest concern are the western and eastern elevations of the structure. I submit Photo 1 taken from the lookout in Mornington Park, a view celebrated by Dunedin artists numerous times over the years, by visitors to the city and of course, by the hundreds of Dunedin households. The approximate silhouette of the proposed structure is drawn in to show the obstructive nature and ‘selfish’ size and position of the hotel. The scale of the building is completely inappropriate. Photo 2 is from the same position, zoomed in and marked with the Wharf St railway lighting tower measured at 35m used to indicate the dominance of the proposed 96.3m hotel structure. The eastern elevation from the peninsula suburbs too, will experience the overscale of the building against the city and hill suburbs.

Photo 3 taken, on zoom from Bellevue Street, Belleknowes, again includes the structure’s silhouette scaled off the marked rail light tower. If the cladding of the proposed tower is mainly glass, with it being so high above the city, the western sun will create issues of sun strike on roads leading down from the suburbs, and obviously, serious effects and obstruction to the views enjoyed by thousands of households.

Photo 4 is from lower down the Belleknowes spur, from Adam Street, with an estimated, but conservative profile (photo lacks a known structure to measure off) drawn. Again the aesthetic values and scale of the harbour basin are entirely offended by an ill considered structure.

What concerns me most about this application for resource consent to build an inappropriate structure (by position and scale), is the inadequacy of the supplied application documents to present the structure in the context of the city. Widely published images are fantasy, such as an elevated, high angle view from well above the harbour, attempting to diminish the perceived size of the structure. The only humans to view the structure from this angle, position and elevation may be those wealthy enough to, by helicopter. These images are notable for their lack of contextual structures that make, in fact, the character of Dunedin. Buildings of 2, 3 or more storeys set the scale appropriate for development and are absent from the application documents precisely to obscure the real affect this structure will have on the city’s landscape and its aesthetic values. Design consultancy information only focuses on the very immediate surroundings and contains no spatial plan for this giant structure in the context of the city. I have attempted to show how 120 degrees of the city centre and its hill suburbs will have their harbour and peninsula views and joy of place seriously obstructed. The peninsula suburbs will view a structure absurdly contradicting the city structures and rounded hill suburbs. All incoming transport links, as a special feature of this city, enjoy delightful revelation of the ‘great little city’, its harbour and the waters of the Pacific. These heartening views enjoyed by all, citizen and visitor, will be irretrievable spoiled and dominated by a tower designed (and possibly built) for a city the scale of Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur or Singapore.

Lastly, the attempt at this sort of inappropriate development is an affront to the careful planning [of] the city’s forefathers to create an egalitarian community enjoying the delightful natural environment Dunedin offers. The proposed structure stands at 96m. This is only a matter of metres below the elevation of much of the Green Belt. Jubilee Park is at a 100m elevation. The Green Belt designed and implemented so long ago and maintained for the benefit of all, is carefully placed so that wherever a person stands in the city centre they can look up the hills to the skyline and see only green, the suburbs beyond obscured by the angle of view. This creates a very special intimate city, a human scaled city, for the benefit and edification of those living or visiting here. This, in conjunction with historical character (now lost in Christchurch), a rich, intelligent, creative and industrious community is what makes Dunedin a destination, a special, memorable place that with sympathetic development will continue to attract visitors and citizens who will not find the likes, elsewhere in the world. Structures like the proposed hotel are notable for being the same the world over. In being built it will change the very character of the place visitors will be seeking to experience.

I submit in the strongest terms that the Dunedin City Council turn down this application for resource consent and I suggest that the non compliance of this application to the requirements of the Resource Management Act to protect the amenity, aesthetic and cultural values and wellbeing of the people of Dunedin will bring this matter to the Environment Court.

Yours sincerely

Madeleine Lamont
B. Landscape Architecture (Hons), Lincoln University

—

Compare these indicative images to those prepared by Truescape of Christchurch for the Applicant:

LUC-2012-212 12. Viewpoint booklet (PDF, 3.4MB)
This document is a scanned copy of the application for resource consent

—

Related Posts:
20.11.12 City planner’s report recommends against consent for hotel
10.11.12 Dunedin Hotel, 41 Wharf Street (LUC 2012-212)
8.9.12 Waterfront Hotel #Dunedin (Applicant names?)
7.9.12 Waterfront hotel: DCC to notify resource consent application
16.5.12 Dunedin Hotel

—

The Applicant, Betterways Advisory Limited, gets one and a half days for presentation to the hearing committee (Cr Colin Weatherall, Cr Andrew Noone, Cr Kate Wilson, and independent commissioner John Lumsden). Submitters have been allowed ten minutes each. Written communication from City Planning makes no time allowance for submitters wishing to use experts.

—

Posted by Elizabeth Kerr