credentials

One of the largest development proposals to have ever crossed Kaipara District Council’s desk will be released for public consultation later this month.

A consortium, known as Mangawhai Hills, wants to develop an area formerly known as Frecklington Farm, encompassing nearly 220 hectares bounded by Tara Road, Cove Road, Old Waipu Road, and stretching south as far as Moir Street.

The proposal will carve up 2.2 square kilometres of rural land, west of the town, to develop 600 residential lots and some 15kms of walking and bike trails.

Around 500 of the proposed large-lot residential sites will be serviced by an on-site wastewater treatment plant built as part of the project, while the remainder – those closer to the village – will eventually be serviced by the Mangawhai wastewater scheme.

Patrick Fontein, the developer who leads the Mangawhai Hills initiative, says that is only one of the environmental elements in what he calls the conservation continued page 2 design approach being taken – “a more harmonious way of land development”.

He says that at least half of the overall site will be devoted to conservation in perpetuity.

The aim is to build twice as many kilometres of walkway as road – about 15 kms of walking trails, including a wide shared paved pathway, areas running through re-wilded natural areas, and about 3.6 km of tracks through native bush. The tracks will be open for public use.

“This is totally the opposite of a gated community,” he says. “We are very encouraging of people to come through and use the walking trails.”

Fontein said the proposed development would largely involve “looking after our own” with regard to water and sewerage systems, and included solar panelling that would not only power the site, but generate more electricity than needed, feeding excess back into the grid. With stringent house design guidelines, and clean building concepts, the goal would be to achieve a carbon zero situation on-site.

“The main thing I’m focused on is regenerative design – leaving the site in a better condition after development than pre-development.”

He concedes there will be additional costs to achieve that vision.

“Our thought pattern is that if people like living next to nature, which they do, then they’ll want to buy those sections. The sales pitch will be targeting the environmentallyconscious customer.” from page 1

Mangawhai Hills has an information office, run by Steve Brebner, who is talking to people in the neighbourhood and wider community, answering questions about the proposal.

Brebner says the response has been largely positive and supportive, while other reaction has been neutral. Some people having questions pertaining to where they live.

“It will be a changed land form, but that’s what the [Mangawhai] Spatial Plan envisages,” Fontein says, referring to the 2020 planning document that projects the population will grow to about 14,500 by 2043.

On July 26, the Kaipara District Council voted to accept Mangawhai Hills’ application for a private plan change to rezone the rural land for residential development. It instructed the chief executive to publicly notify the change, and for a public consultation process to begin on August 28 and run until September 26.

Council staff stressed that “accepting” did not amount to “adopting”. While adopting means the council would itself take the application forward, at ratepayers’ expense, accepting merely moves the process along towards notification.

They said council would later appoint commissioners to investigate the proposal, and, in most cases, council had the final say, once the commissioners had made recommendations.

Consultation documents will be available on the council website as well as council offices in Mangawhai and Dargaville. Info: www.kaipara.govt.nz

Mangawhai Hills consortium lead Patrick Fontein’s background includes property development and consultancy. He provided consulting to Auckland Council on its Auckland Plan for six years, and is a member of the Property Council New Zealand’s Auckland regional committee.

Thirteen years ago, he was declared bankrupt over debt owed to BNZ and other creditors involved in the Kensington Park housing development in Ōrewa. Asked about that episode, Fontein says that a number of New Zealand developers with big projects underway at the time of the global financial crisis in 2007-2008 “went kaput”.

In his case, BNZ’s Australian owners decided to recall loans, and there was “nothing I could do about it, no way I could repay it”.

He says the difference with the proposed Mangawhai development is that it will be equity funded with no bank debt. Asked if he is worried about the bankruptcy question being raised as he seeks community support for the project, he says he is happy to discuss it with anyone.

“In terms of trust, I don’t have any debt so I don’t have anyone who’s going to change what we do,” he says.

“It’s made me a lot more resilient.” Fontein says that he is happy to stand behind the dozens of projects he has been involved in, including Kensington Park, where he says the sales values and conservation design elements have all stood up very well.