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Viranda Holdings revealed its designs for a retail strip on the main street of the Mangawhai Central development at a well-attended meeting last month.
The most anticipated feature is a 2560sqm New World concept store, which will be the first of its kind in New Zealand and will feature a new gabled roof design.
The plans for the retail strip showed a wide streetscape, which architect Rob Guild said could be used for community markets.
He said the design included a feature wall that the developers hoped would be painted by children from Mangawhai Beach School.
Architect Arno Pieters said the signage greeting visitors would resemble a lighthouse, while two light boxes on either side of the street would be like lanterns.
He said the design team had created a nautical theme with white steel and weathered timber, along with ice cream colour tones to give a vacation vibe.
Viranda Chairman said Bayleys in the North had been instructed to seek expressions of interest from retailers for the development, as well as a potential operator for the planned retirement village.
At the meeting, residents raised several concerns with the development team.
Kaipara District Councillor Peter Wethey said the resource consent required Viranda to raise the ground height level of the development by 600m in anticipation of flooding caused by climate change.
“The land is only one metre above the high tide mark. Nobody wants to see this development sink,” he said.
Engineer James Dufty said the plans included a stormwater network that would accommodate a hundred-year event, and rising sea levels had been factored in.
Someone asked where the new development would draw its water from, saying that if too much was taken from the underground aquifer, the water would go salty.
Chairman Andrew Guest said the engineering team had not solved the problem of sustainably sourcing enough water to satisfy resource consent conditions, but was working on a solution that would likely include a mix of aquifers, bores and efficient rainwater collection.
Another resident he was concerned that rates would go up because of the new development, which would likely overload an inadequate sewerage system.
Mr Guest said that was an issue for the Kaipara District Council to solve and that the sewerage system would reach capacity whether the development was built or not.
“The new motorway will open soon and the growth is going up phenomenally anyway. I’m just being a realist – it’s going to go toilet.”
Another questioner asked Mr Guest just how many houses would go into the new development. He said it was a moving target.
“The original permission was for 500 homes, but the indication was that it would be 750 or 1000 over 15 years, but I don’t want to be quoted on that.”
