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A major residential development in Warkworth has incurred significant additional costs after accelerating its development process with a Private Plan Change.
Templeton chief executive Nigel McKenna told a Warkworth Liaison Group meeting last week that he had had to make contingency plans for water and wastewater, given that there could be a 12-month lag before these services were available on site.
Templeton is developing the Warkworth Ridge project, around the Matakana link road, which will connect to the new wastewater treatment plant being built at Snells Beach. Auckland Council’s Unitary Plan had envisaged the land being development ready by 2026, but Templeton had sped up the process with Plan Change 40 that became operative in June last year. Work started on site soon afterwards.
Titles for the first tranche of sections are expected to be in place by early next year, but the treatment plant won’t be finished until 2024.
“We cannot afford to have land sitting vacant waiting for water and wastewater connections,” McKenna said.
He said the contingency plans included installing costly booster pumps to get consistent water pressure and a back-up trucking plan to take wastewater off site.
“Effectively, it’s like taking out an insurance policy. We know the water and wastewater will get their eventually, but trucking wastewater is not something that anyone wants to do.
“I’ve been developing for 35 years and it’s not something I’ve ever had to do before. It’s not like we’re building in the wop-wops; the development is at the end of a new motorway.”
McKenna said there were about 100 people employed on the 60-hectare site and when completed in 2024, the development would include around 650 land parcels. Sections would vary from 350sqm to more than 1000sqm and prices would range from $400,000 to more than $1 million.
“We would have liked more density, but council would not approve it.”
The plan includes a neighbourhood centre, 10km of walkways, three parks and the revegetation of just over a kilometre of streams. Responding to a question about the width of roads, McKenna said the days of streets being too narrow for emergency services to access were long gone, adding that streets in Warkworth Ridge had been designed to follow the land’s contour.
The meeting was disappointed to learn that a requirement to plant a further five hectares of native vegetation off-site would occur in Kumeu, not Warkworth.
“That was what council wanted,” McKenna said.
