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Simone Bulmer, chair of the Red Beach Environment & Lifestyle Protection Trust (a group of residents formed to oppose the development), say that the decision gives the Red Beach community a chance to have its say. The owners and operators of the rest home, CHT Healthcare Trust, had been seeking to limit notification to the most affected neighbour.
The proposal includes demolition of the existing buildings at 33 and 35 Bay Vista Drive and construction of a three-storey building across two sections that extend from Halldene Terrace to Bay Vista Drive.
It will enable the rest home, which caters for elderly and frail people who can no longer be cared for at home, to provide 70 beds rather than the 37 currently available. Twenty-three new car parks are proposed.
CHT Healthcare Trust chief executive Max Robins says that the number of beds required for aged residential care locally is projected to increase by 53 percent by 2021. “Unless additional beds are built, residents will be required to move away from where they now live to access residential care,” he says. “This project enables CHT to meet some of the future need.”
He says that the development will move traffic off Halldene Terrace and provide off street parking at the end of the site.
However, a group of around 50 neighbours are concerned about the potential effects on traffic, noise and parking when the number of residents, and staff, increase.
Mrs Bulmer says that the current zoning of the site as Residential Medium Intensity is intended to protect and maintain the residential character.
“The proposed intensive expansion of CHT Halldene is clearly contrary to the intent of this Residential zone,” Mrs Bulmer says. “The Trust recognises that services such as these are definitely required within all of our communities.
However, there are specific sites and zones where they are appropriate given that these activities, like many non-residential land uses, have the potential to result in significant adverse effects on the established neighbourhood. This site is not suitable for the proposed increase in intensity.”
The resource consent application infringes some of the current District Plan rules, including height to boundary on the Gilshennan Reserve side.
The Red Beach Environment & Lifestyle Protection Trust is holding an information evening at Red Beach School this week, November 20, at 7.30pm and anyone can attend.
Submissions on the resource consent application close on November 30. Copies of the plans and submission forms will be available at the November 20 meeting. They are also on the Council website, www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz and at local libraries and Orewa Service Centre in Centreway Rd.
