ZONING APPEALS Board Regrets Its Adverse Decision

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30085, 20 March 1963, Page 15

ZONING APPEALS Board Regrets Its Adverse Decision

To give a Riccarton road resident relief from a zoning decision would probably result in a worse evil in the long run. said Mr J. W. Kealy, S.M., chairman of the Town and Country Planning Appeal Board, yesterday. Mr Kealy said the board felt with some regret that Alice Pearl Knight's appeal against zoning of her house property as residential A must be disallowed. It was a difficult case because the board felt Mrs Knight suffered under a very real hardship. The board would like to have been able to give relief, said Mr Kealy, but to right one wrong in this case would have been to create a still worse one—a commercial or industrial spot in the middle of a residential area. Surrounded by Industry

For Mrs Knight, Mr B. McClelland said the property v as a two-storey house at 50 Riccarton road, and was surrounded by industry. Mrs Knight's son had lived there since 1956 and complained that it was not suitable for residential use.

In that part of Riccarton road. between Harakeke street and Hagley Park there were shops and commercial properties on one side and only seven houses on the other.

It would never be suitable as a residential area. The alternative to commercial or industrial zoning was to force the others in the block to revert to residential use. The house was bound to turn into an eyesore unless something was done to save it.

Mr Kealy said the big difficulty was that planning in Riccarton had begun too late. The Riccarton Borough Council was now endeavouring to concentrate the industrial and commercial areas. In this block other occupiers would continue as nonconformers and the properties would revert to residen-

tial as their places became inadequate, fell down or burned down. Mr E. I. White, representing the Riccarton Borough Council, said the council’s decision to zone the area residential was in line with its desire to keep all industrysouth of Riccarton road and have none on the north side. There had been appeals from no other occupiers in the block.

Mr R. Sarjeant, the Riccarton Town Clerk, said the area's closeness to Hagley Park made it well-suited for high - density residential development. Riccarton road was a major traffic route which should be protected from the effect of uses of land adjoining the road which cause interference with the free flow of traffic.