Guest Post: developing Glen Eden

This is a Guest Post by regular commenter Matt L. If you wish to contribute a Guest Post please contact admin – details under “Contact Us”.

It has been talked about quite a bit in the last few days about the need to intensify around train stations and other PT corridors to help make the system more viable. Also this is part of the way we will be able to fit in a projected extra 600,000 people into the city in the next 30-40 years. Rod Oram also mentioned the other day that while the ARC wanted to intensify the region within the Metropolitan Urban Limits (MUL) the district plans of the various councils didn’t support it which is part of the reason why it hasn’t happened that much.

Interestingly, the CBD Rail Link study looked into how to get more development near train stations and it focused its attention on stations that would be about 20 minutes from the CBD, this meant New Lynn in the west, Sylvia Park on the Eastern and Otahuhu on the southern. I thought I would look further than that to see where else there could be some good development opportunities and as I know the area the better I will focus on the Western line.

The western line is interesting in that there are quite a few settlements/town centres located on the line a similar distance apart from each other. The major areas of New Lynn and Henderson are only about 10 minutes apart by train (which is faster than driving) and right in the middle of them is Glen Eden which I will focus on for this post. Glen Eden has the large Waikumete Cemetery to the North West and is surrounded on other sides by houses, Waitakere city had some ideas to revitalise the town centre and these are summarised here but it doesn’t focus much on residential development. If the plans turn out like envisaged it could be quite a neat place to live.

Interestingly the part of the area with probably the lowest density is the part right next to the station as can be seen below.

As you can see from the photo there is a fairly large section of open land that borders onto the station. In fact the area just to the north of the station that is bordered by Clayburn Rd and Brandon Rd has less than 20 houses on it and looking at info from the last census that indicates that there is less than 60 people living in that those houses. So what could we do to develop that land?

The land is worth a combined value of about $6-7 mil and covers about 16000sq m. That would allow about 90 town houses which would put 200-250 people next to the station which is a big improvement but is it enough for an area with huge potential due to the existing town centre just across the tracks?

A few years ago after a long search I found an excellent apartment near town up by the corner of Symonds St and Khyber Pass, it had a great layout and actually felt quite spacious which is rare in Auckland as many buildings have been done cheaply with the sole focus on squeezing as many apartments in as possible. The building had 4 floors of apartments and had about 60 apartments in it, measuring it the building covered 1400sq m of land.

Using that as a guide it appears it would be quite easy to get 5 similar sized buildings on the section of land I mentioned and I have indicated this on the picture below.

Each block shown here is at least 2000sq m which is more than enough for 60 apartments each. In fact that would be big enough to enable many of the apartments to be 3 or even 4 bedrooms in size which could be useful for families or groups of students. It would also allow quite a large area in the centre (the area here is about 2500sq m) to create a nice courtyard/mini park which would make it nicer to live in the development. It would be a short stroll to the town centre and there is a primary school less than a 200m walk. If priced right this would make it ideal for young couples or families buying their first home.

It could put easily around 1000 people right next to or even integrated with the train station, in a town centre that is a 5 minute train ride from either New Lynn or Henderson and less than 30 minutes from the CBD (post tunnel). This would boost the local economy making it easier to justify improving the area and is a far more efficient use of the land we have.

Of course a development like this wouldn’t be easy or cheap, it would be hard to acquire all the properties and many locals would likely object to the idea of having apartment blocks near them.

As for the economics of it, remember the current combined value of those houses is $6-$7million. If you built around 300 apartments in these blocks then even if each apartment sold cheaply for say $200,000 then less the property cost that still leaves around $50 million to design and build them. This is surely a great way for us to provide cheaper places for people to live, in an established area next to transport links so people don’t have to be so car dependant. It would also help to justify investment in the towns revival like the council wanted which would also benefit other land owners nearby. Surely a much better idea than having to spend millions on infrastructure to develop new greenfields land further out of the city and further removing part of the productive farm land that surrounds us.

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