BRAND NEW APARTMENTS AVAILABLE NOW

AT ITS BEST

William Sanders Village features modern apartments set in picture-perfect surroundings. There’s a lifestyle option to suit everyone, and if your needs change over time, there is a care centre within our village community.

Brand-new one and two bedroom apartments available now

Stunning views across Auckland city, the Harbour Bridge, Rangitoto and Mount Victoria

Neutral colour palette

Priced from $870,000

Neighbours gone as village deals with fallout

When floods struck Sunnynook in January, Parklane retirement village resident Peter McNee waded through thigh-deep water across the road from his villa to help neighbours not sitting as high and dry.

Now he looks across to where their empty yellow-stickered homes are only just being repaired, knowing some will never return to enjoy their well-tended gardens.

Nine villas at the village will not be reoccupied at all, with owner-operator Arvida deciding retreat is the best option from a small portion of its site. Of 99 villas, 39 sustained damage, with 30 being repaired. Fourteen apartments on the ground floor of a three-storey block were also flooded.

Repairs on the main administration and communal dining and facilities block are also progressing slowly, with a container outside housing the complex’s temporary kitchen, where staff make meals for residents who do not self-cater.

Down the road, the Sunnynook Community Centre is providing space for exercise classes that were once held in the main block.

The heated indoor swimming pool has remained closed since the floods.

McNee, the chair of the Sunnynook Community Association and a former manager of World Vision New Zealand, has lived happily at Parklane for 11 years with wife Elizabeth. He speaks highly of the way Arvida manages the complex and the assistance it has provided flood-hit residents, including moving some to other parts of the village or other retirement homes it owns. Fees for services have been halved.

He is less complimentary about Auckland Council’s handling of infrastructure provision amid intensification in the suburb.

Having driven local projects, including having a toilet and drinking fountain installed at the Triton Dr playground and helping lobby for skatepark facilities that are still in the pipeline, he knows council

High water... At the height of the floods in January, the lower level of a Parklane apartment block was inundated and about 15 cars in the car-port (above right) were written off, after water reached its roof wheels turn slowly. But when it comes to Sunnynook’s flood risk, this polite community activist is direct.

“We’re going to be flooded again. What do we do? We need a plan,” he tells the Observer.

He feels the village itself is safe, now the homes nearest the creek are to remain empty, but worries for the wider community.

The empty homes over the road from the McNees’ villa are a sad reminder of the dislocation that can strike.

One couple have been moved from their two-bedroom villa to a smaller home elsewhere in the village. A single woman was shifted to an apartment and a widower has moved out to be with family.

Another couple who were neighbours, who McNee has known for 58 years, are renting in Milford.