The Cashmere Estate

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32838, 11 February 1972, Page 8

The Cashmere Estate

The Cashmere Estate will continue to be farmed, instead of being subdivided, for at least four years: this is the inference to be drawn from the sale on Monday to two brothers who farm property at Halswell and Cashmere, including one of the adjoining properties. The Cashmere Estate is zoned rural, ah application to the Heathcote County Council two years ago for the rezoning of 120 acres as residential A having been declined. The previous owner farmed the land quite intensively; the auctioneer’s note said that 2860 sheep were carried on the property, and the owner had been fattening more than 300 head of cattle and 1000 lambs each season. The new owners have spoken highly of the property as farmland.

But the $210,000-odd paid for the propertymore than $l7O an acre—is $30,000 or more higher than a prudent purchaser would pay for land of similar farming potential 50 miles from Christchurch. There need be little doubt that the premium was paid for the location of the property described by the auctioneer as having “unlimited subdivisional “ potential ”, One of the unsuccessful bidders at the auction said that a price of about $215,000 was a “bargain to a developer with patience and deter- “ mination prepared to wait a few years Just how many years the developer might have to wait is unknown; the next review of the regional plan is to be made in 1976.

Whether the rezoning of the property will be approved in 1976—0 r at any later date—will be a matter for consideration by the Heathcote County Council, the Christchurch Drainage Board, the Regional Planning Authority, and perhaps the North Canterbury Catchment Board and other bodies. In the relatively short space of four years many changes can be expected in the development of Christchurch, not all of them favourable to the subdivision of the Cashmere Estate. A rapid expansion of housing development in the Hpon Hay and Halswell areas to the south and west of the property and a sharp rise in property values in Cashmere, to the east of the property, might suggest ? need to make further land in the area available for subdivision; they might equally be held to demonstrate the desirability of preserving the Cashmere Estate as farmland or even of converting it to public use as parkland.

The' Drainage Board and the Catchment Board made no secret of their alarm over the previous owner’s plans to subdivide 120 acres. Stormwater drainage into the Heathcote would cause flooding; no sewer extensions to the area are planned; some hundreds of acres of potential market garden land would be built over. Land developers will argue that the market garden potential has not yet been developed, so that the establishment of vegetable gardens by residents would add to rather than subtract from the horticultural production of the estate; and drainage and sewerage problems can usually be overcome by good engineering. Most of the costs of stormwater and sewage disposal would be borne by the developers and the owners of the subdivided sections; and the bigger the subdivision the smaller the costs incurred by each owner. But whether or when the property is to be subdivided is a question to be determined in the interests of the whole urban area. If the new owners of the property make a handsome profit on their investment, that is their good luck; but the fact that they have paid a substantial premium for their farmland should in no way influence the decisions of town planners and local body members responsible for shaping the future development of the urban area.