Homes brush shoulders with businesses

Options for apartment living right in Ōrewa town centre are growing.

For some time the Nautilus has been the only apartment block in central Ōrewa, but that is changing – first with the Hopper Development’s 3-storey retail, office and apartment block at 14 Tamariki Ave, completed last year, and now with an apartment block which has Auckland Council consent to be built in Florence Ave.

The new residential buildings demonstrate how Council’s Business/Mixed Use zone may work, bringing homes into closer touch with areas formerly focused on business.

Developer Oceania P & D (sole director Ji Ho Ryu of Auckland) has consent to build a 5-storey apartment block in Florence Ave, Ōrewa, which is in the Business/Mixed Use zone.

The 809sqm site at 51 Florence Ave is next to the Ōrewa Hospice shop and currently has a single storey commercial building on it.

The developer initially applied last June for resource consent to build a 5-storey block comprising 21 retail and accommodation units on the land. A month later, the company applied to alter this, removing most of the studio units and replacing them with 1.5-3 bedroom units. The application to change the original consent states that this was because there is more interest in the market for 2-3 bedroom options.

The changes reduced the total number of units to 15 and there was an increase in car parks from 10-20.

The latest plan received consent from Council, on a non-notified basis, last September.

The Business/Mixed Use zone in Council’s Unitary Plan is designed to act as a transition area, in terms of scale and activity, between residential and commercial zones. It also applies to areas where there is a need for a compatible mix of residential and employment activities.

Provisions typically enable heights up to four storeys but greater height may be possible in areas close to the city centre, metropolitan centres and larger town centres.

Issues considered by Council’s planners when granting consent for the residential complex at 51 Florence Ave include the capacity of infrastructure such as water and sewage, car parking and landscape amenity.

The planners were satisfied in all these areas, and the consented landscaping includes groups of palm trees, hedging and mass under-planting with boulders “to buffer the neighbouring property and to improve amenity of outlook from above apartments and the street frontage”.

Marketing of the apartments is currently on hold.