Trials and tribulations in Westmorland land development

Press, 16 July 1982, Page 13

Trials and tribulations in Westmorland land development

By

PATRICIA HERBERT

A metallic-blue Jaguar purrs down Penruddock Rise from the Westmorland subdivision towards Cashmere Road and the city.

It is a warm, still, midweek afternoon, and the sun glints off the radiator grille. The vehicle looks just right — Westmorland was designed for people who can afford to drive expensive cars.

Dubbed "the' modem Cashmere,” the 125-hectare block at Worsley’s Spur ranges from 10 to 160 metres above sea-level and commands views of the city and across the Canterbury Plains to the Southern Alps. It was originally farmland but the developer, Wayne Francis, and his brother, Bruce, bought it from their father in 1958 and decided later to convert it into a housing estate. They were partners in the enterprise until late last year when Wayne bought out his brother. “It was never really his cup of tea," he explains. The inspiration belonged to Wayne: he used to sit on the hill as a boy and imagine it covered with houses, the roads snaking between them.

His idea was to use the terrain — it is divided into three ridges by two valleys which drain into the Cashmere stream — to create a residential development based on the open space planning concept. The site has been graded but the roads have been built to follow the natural contours of the hills and the shape of the land remains substantially as it was. More than 20 per cent of the land, the steeper slopes and the natural gullies, were planted in trees ($9OOO worth) and set aside as public reserves. Access will be through an integrated system of walkways. The average section is 920 square nitres; without the reserves it might have been considerably larger. But the planning was purposeful: it recognised that today people

are less inclined to commit themselves to the maintenance of gardens big enough to accommodate the planting of full-size trees. It was also a means of reducing hillside erosion, and it was in harmony with the statement of principles contained within the Paparua County Council’s district scheme.

the natural advantages of the hills location — the views, the warmer climate, and the freedom from frosts and smog — secured for it an up-market potential. Wayne Francis’s ambition was to harness this potential. He sought "to develop a planned and balanced residential area" which would encourage a wide range of housing types "of a consistently high standard.” The project was to be worked in six stages with two shopping centres — the first, a neighbourhood grocery, and the second, • a larger commercial precinct containing a supermarket, a drapery or pharmacy, a butchery-delicatessen, a beauty salon-hairdressers, a dairy, and a. tavern. The first stage was com-’ pleted in 1976 and offered for sale. It contained about 70 sections which fetched prices of between $21,500 and $24,000 each.

With the 32 sections in the second stage now on the market, many of the earlier lots have had houses built on them.

Architect-designed and imposing by any standard, the houses have fulfilled Mr Francis's expectation that Westmorland would be an exclusive subdivision. He and his brother raised the initial finance from assets and through the sale of other properties. When the budget exceeded the estimate. they were forced to refinance the development in New Zealand, and later through heavily-secured overseas loans. With terms offered to sec-tion-buyers of 10 per cent deposit and 20 per cent after 12 months, Mr Francis has received little return on an investment of more than $3 million. But the costs are diminishing as work progresses: the amenities have been installed, and most of the roading has been completed. He says that although he still has high interest rates and a strenuous repayment schedule to meet on his loans, he is beginning “to get a bit of pleasure” out of the subdivision. The days of knuckle-gnawing anxiety are over.

It has been a very long process. To develop his hills, Mr Francis has had to struggle against mountains of red tape. First, he was required to submit a detailed structure plan to the Paparua County Council for approval. This involved, among other things,■ providing a contour map and test drilling to establish theclay depth in the soil. Then he had to contend with the Christchurch Drainage Board which offered to connect the subdivision’s sewer works to the city system.

However, he was told that before this could be done, the system had to be up-graded. Mr Francis, with some other Halswell ■ developers, un-

derwrote the cost of improving the pumping stations to the tune of $350,000.

But in April, 1976, the board brought a prosecution against him for discharging silt into the Cashmere stream. It was the first case of its kind in New Zealand.

Elaborate precautions had been taken, at the board's insistence, to avoid polluting the waterways. A holding pond was built at the foot of the subdivision to contain the waste displaced during the initial large-scale earth works.

However, Mr Francis breached the pond’s embankment with a bulldozer and the opaque yellow water was disgorged into the stream. He did not divulge what prompted him to do this.

Perhaps it was pique, perhaps it was simple bloodymindedness.

Whatever it was, he paid for it. The magistrate (Mr H. J. Evans SM) found in a reserved decision that the discharge was the result of “a positive and deliberate act” and fined him $250 plus costs.

The board then imposed a $1 million bond to cover any faults which might emerge in the subdivision’s sewer system after it was connected to the city works. Mr Francis challenged the decision before the Town and Country Planning Board which overturned it, ruling that the demand was “totally unreasonable.”

The fuss developed out of the damage caused to West-

morland’s sewer system by a freak storm in June of the previous year. It cost Mr Francis $150,000 to repair, and it undermined the board’s confidence in the subdivision’s stormwater and sewerage facilities although both had been completed in conformity with its requirements and under its supervision.

The Drainage Board was not, however, the only local authority to provoke Mr Francis to litigation. ‘

He estimates that he is “out of pocket by $15,000” to the Education Board due to legal expenses. "I think that it abused its powers under the Public Works Act." The board told him that it wanted to build a primary school on the subdivision. He

offered a choice of two sites — one at the foot of the hill and the other at the top. The department chose the second but refused to buy it because it had not yet been designated for educational use.

Mr Francis applied to the council for permission to subdivide the land for residential purposes to force the board to properly designate, and pay for, the site. But the board stalled proceedings by opting for the location at the bottom of the hill that it had in the first instance rejected. Undeterred, Mr Francis immediately submitted another change-of-use application to ensure that this time it bought the land. After instructions from the council’s town planning committee, the Ministry of

Works imposed an educational designation on the lower site and the council accordingly declined the subdivision application. Mr Francis appealed against the decision to the Planning Tribunal. The appeal was disallowed, but the tribunal said that it would expect the board to buy the land when road access and amenities had been provided.

The work had been completed to suit the board’s requirements when, in May of this year, the Ministry of Works informed Mr Francis that the designation had been uplifted and that the site was no longer required. The land now needs to be re-structured for residential use, he says. And there have been other

upsets. Three freakishly heavy downpours accounting between them for more than 20 inches of rain in less than 36 hours, caused flooding which set back the works programme. He invested $lBOO in small trees which he planted along the roadsides and, within two weeks, they had all been stolen. He did not bother to replace them. The development attracted a bad press when, in 1975, a pipeline burst and caused extensive erosion. The incident, which occurred at the time of the Catchment Board elections, was widely publicised and it . was rumoured that the land was unstable for housing. The flooding was due to “human error," Mr Francis says. The contract engineer ’ forgot to line the floor of the silt trap with concrete and water seeped below the stormwater system. He is bitter about the claims that the subdivision was unsafe. “It would suit a lot of people if the houses had slipped down the hill, but they haven’t." Economic forces have also conspired against him. The first stage was completed and the sections put on the market at a time when Christchurch was over-sup-plied with residential building sites and demand was reduced because of a mass exodus overseas. ' , One of the city’s biggest' property developers, Christchurch Estates, went into liquidation, but Mr Francis decided “to sib lit out.” A credit crisis in the private sector caused by the

investment of millions of dollars in the Government’s inflation-proof bonds, has produced a slump in the property market which might impede the sale of the sections in the second stage of the subdivision. But he is optimistic. “The i advantage that I have at the moment is that the person can make a commitment for a section and I’m carrying the terms for two years and he knows that, sometime be-, fore then, there will be an upturn in the market.” He is concerned, however, that the Government’s bullish manipulation of the economy, together with the timeconsuming procedures of local bodies, will discourage private property development Except at the most senior levels, local government employees delay decisions because they are afraid that if they make a mistake they will lose their jobs, he says. "They are fairly nervous types who have got the academic and intellectual ability to make the decisions, but not the courage to go into . business alone.”

But the dilly-dallying can lock the developer into an accelerating cost spiral and its effects are “crippling," he adds.

Committed to high interest payments, the time loss can force him further into debt. , Asked whether he plans to build at Westmorland himself, Mr Francis says that he has thought of it but now doubts that he could afford it

But he does drive a suitably expensive car.