The Newtown Residents’ Association met on June 15th 2015.

See the June Minutes for a full report on the meeting. These were two of the main topics:

Housing Development

Work has begun on clearing the way for a new Special Housing Development on the site of the empty warehouses between Princess, Horner and Mansfield Streets.  Two residents from Princess Terrace told of being woken at 2am on Wednesday 10 June by a large truck manoeuvring to deliver a raised show home to an empty site.  This link to a Trademe advertisement gives an impression of the houses planned – 34 units, 3 storey with 2-3 bedrooms.

Concerns brought to the meeting were: Princess Tce is the single access road and is inadequate for the expected volumes of traffic; two businesses in the area, a glass storage business and Triptych a conservation business that restores small delicate items, are likely to be impacted by the vibrations and dust during demolition and construction; two of the roofs contain asbestos; earthworks on the bank may impact on the safety and stability of surrounding houses; and there is a risk of channelled water adding to the city’s flooding.

Residents would like to open up a communication channel with the developers.

The meeting agreed that NRA would write to the WCC to support these points.

Ryman’s Tip-top Site

This Hanson St site has been sold to Ryman Healthcare for a boutique retirement village. In the meantime it is still being vandalised with graffiti, which WCC has been cleaning off. Cr Eagle said there has been no real engagement between WCC and Ryman to date.

NRA will write to Ryman asking for more information about their plans.