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The area of development land in Warkworth has been upsized in Auckland Council’s latest strategy to build 400,000 houses in the region over the next 30 years.
The Future Urban Land Supply Strategy, released last month, sets out the timing for development within the Rural Urban Boundary to help plan infrastructure.
In the final plan, the amount of development land to the north of Warkworth has increased by nearly 50 per cent, from 290ha to 433ha, as a large chunk of land between Matakana Road and Sandspit has been included. This has increased the number of houses expected in the area from 1900-2200 to 3200-3800. The number of jobs expected in the area has also more than doubled, from 1400 to 3270.
This takes the total amount of development land in Warkworth up to 865ha, with development in the north of Warkworth set to happen between 2022 and 2026 and development to the south of Warkworth starting in 2027.
The additional land, referred to as Warkworth North East in the plan, was zoned as future urban in the proposed Unitary Plan, but was excluded from the draft land supply strategy.
In July, Auckland Plan strategy and research general manager Jacques Victor said this was because the land would only accommodate low-density housing and there was a risk of sediment run-off from construction entering the Mahurangi River.
However, last month, he said the land was included in the strategy after a number of submissions requested the change. Nearly half of the 237 submissions on the draft strategy were from Rodney residents and a public meeting on the plan in August was well attended.
Small tweaks have been made to the plans for the south of Warkworth, which extends to Valerie Close. The area has grown from 420ha to 432ha but the plan shows about 200 fewer dwellings. Job numbers in the south have also nearly doubled from 400 to 770.
Mr Victor says the job figures have been updated to include a wider variety of potential jobs.
“The draft strategy included employment at industrial locations only,” Mr Victor says. “The job numbers were rerun across the future urban areas to better estimate the number of potential jobs across all land uses.”
The latest estimate on the cost of infrastructure to service growth has risen from $300 million to $850 million.
“The initial costs provided for the draft strategy were indicative and high level, taking into account bulk infrastructure only. We have been working with infrastructure providers to undertake a greater level of analysis to understand requirements across all infrastructure types (transport, water, wastewater, stormwater, open space and community). For the final strategy, all project costs have been revisited and newly identified projects have been added. The costs now also include contingencies and inflation. We will continue to work with infrastructure providers to refine these projects and costs.”
The final Rural Urban Boundary will be determined by Auckland Council.
