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The Waters Edge tower block at Ferrymead has proven to be one of the most controversial building projects in the Heathcote Valley area. Whether you consider it to be an exceptional new standard for apartments or a monstrous, concrete, mausoleum of a building, at almost 22 metres high, it is a major new feature in our landscape.
 When news of the granting of a Resource Consent broke on Christmas Eve in 2004, a public meeting was called that attracted over 400 people. A petition was organised that received 1300 signatures in four days and the issue attracted widespread media attention. Despite all this, the tower block has been built and is there for all to see. With this failure to stop the project in mind, I decided to take a closer look to find out what might be in store for our Heathcote horizon when we look over at Ferrymead.
The Court's decision
Just up the road from the Waters Edge tower is a large block of land, between Ferry Road and Humphreys Drive, that was the subject of consideration by the Environment Court recently. Building activity is regulated by the Christchurch City District Plan and when there is a dispute it goes to the Environment Court. That is what has happened for this area. Released in January 2008, the Court's decision took the land out of a B4 designation and made it B2. But what does this mean? Well, the short answer is higher buildings and more traffic on Ferry Road.
Reading (wading?) through the 40 or so pages of detailed argument in Environment Court Judge J A Smith's report is hard going. Unless we know the reasons behind the decision however, we won't know if it is a good one or not. So I held my nose and jumped right in. Down on page seven of the report I found a list of the issues on which the decision was based, namely the traffic generated by the site, the amount of retail, commercial and residential space provided, site coverage and height controls. When I think of Ferrymead, I glance at my watch and the thought of traffic jams is not far behind. So far so good, some important issues have been identified by the Court, now lets see how they have been addressed.
But is it a good one?
 The Court's report takes a look at current Christchurch City Council policy and concludes it aims to focus new retailing in suburban centres, rather than dispersing it around a wider area. This is intended to reduce travel on the wider roading network, albeit at the cost of a greater impact in the vicinity of the centre. The Court interprets the Council's policy as saying "this concentration of traffic is an acceptable effect given the wider benefits to the entire roading system". Any particular problems are intended to be addressed using the Council's High Traffic Generator Rule. This makes any activities that are likely to create high volumes of traffic subject to approval at the Council's discretion. In other words, higher traffic volumes are only to be expected near a local centre and the Council should deal with traffic problems as they arise.
But have they seen Ferry Road at rush hour? Well apparently they have because the Court heard evidence of a study for the Council of traffic flows in the area. It looked at the impact of various possible development options and tried to predict what the traffic situation will be like for us in 2011, a date by which the Ferrymead Bridge will have been widened and lights installed at the junction of Ferry Road and Humphries Drive. The Court accepted the evidence that as retail activity in Ferrymead increases, the traffic problems will get worse. What the Court rejected however was the scale of the problem.
Judge Smith was able to find fault with the Council's evidence on traffic problems in a number of ways. His report argues that given the buildings already on the site, it is unlikely that the Council's assumption of a 60,000 m2 floor area for the site by 2011 is realistic. It goes on to note that the amount of traffic created by retail varies widely, depending on what type of retailing is on the site. Most importantly, the report points out that the Council's evidence does not address the impact of a mixed use for the site that could include commercial, business or residential, and notes that these uses have a minimal effect on peak hour traffic. Taken together, these points are used in the report to cast doubt on the idea that a more intensive use of the site is not possible because of traffic problems.
Ferrymead: Our new District Centre?
All of this was used by Judge Smith to potentially send Ferrymead off in a very different direction. Instead of continuing with the Council's vision of a Business Retail Park, under the Court's B2 designation, we are set to be given a District Centre. The suggestion is made that we could get a diverse mixed-use centre on the only piece of land on our side of the city capable of supporting it. Hotels, apartment complexes and commercial office space are mentioned, all within a height limit of 20 metres. The extent of the change Judge Smith has in mind is made clear by his suggestion that the future for Ferry Road "may mean a lowering of its service for through-road
purposes and it becoming more of a service road for the Ferrymead area".
But is a new District Centre what we want? Given the impact on the surrounding road network, the Council certainly don't think so. They strongly argued for a height limit of 12 metres to be imposed, a control on how intensely the site could be used by reducing the plot ratio to 0.5, and to support this with a modification of the High Traffic Generator Rule to further reduce the impact on local roads. All of this was rejected. Instead, the Court concluded that limiting the gross floor area of retailing on the site to 30,000 m2 would be sufficient.
Again I start to think about the traffic problems that are the norm in Ferrymead and worry that Judge Smith's decision will deliver a traffic jam of epic proportions. Height controls were dismissed as a solution in a couple of short paragraphs with the thought that they "would limit options" and a conclusion that a 20 metre height "would provide significant flexibility in the type of activity that could be established on the site". This extra floor space is not seen as a problem by the Court due to a requirement on the owner of the site to limit retailing to the ground floor only, with an upper limit of 30,000 m2. The Court suggests that this will address the Council's concerns about a 60,000m2 retail development. It still leaves an extra 50,000 m2 on the other floors and elsewhere for residential and commercial uses however. Let's hope that the Court is right and these uses and extra floor space won't be a significant contributor to traffic problems in the area.
It will be interesting to see how this decision is taken by the surrounding community. Will they agree about the direction the Court has taken and if not, will they be able to do anything about it? If they can't, then look out for changes on our Heathcote horizon.
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