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Owning the seabed, as Fairway Bay developer Top Harbour does at its marina, has allowed for innovative construction on floating pontoons.
A small boatshed, to be used as a marine education centre is already in place, with 27 tiny houses (around 35sqm each) also to be built on pontoons within the marina.
The plans for the boatshed houses, which provide an alternative to living on board a cruising boat, were made public at the end of 2015 and are now at the building consent stage.
The floating houses already have resource consent from Auckland Council, which required assessment under the NZ Coastal Policy Statement as well as under the Coastal Marina Zone provisions of the Unitary Plan and Gulf Harbour Marina precinct.
Resource consent natural resources and specialist input manager, Daniel Sansbury, says he has not had any similar proposals come across his desk.
“Aside from Fairway Bay, we have not received any other applications for floating accommodation/residential activities,” Mr Sansbury says. “This could be because the Auckland Unitary Plan includes a requirement to demonstrate a functional or operational need for such activities.”
The proposed dwellings have a ground floor and loft/mezzanine, with power, water and sewage services supplied.
Top Harbour development consultant Michael Webb Speight says that the boat sheds won’t be actively promoted or sold until building consent is issued, which he hopes will be within two months.
He says building consent approval is complicated by the fact that Top Harbour needs to show how it will comply with the Building Act – which isn’t written or intended for houses that float.
