Brian Anderson The Western Front www.sunlive.co.nz

The Katikati Community Board heard an update on rural lifestyle planning from a council senior planner last week.

The concept of a Rural 3 lifestyle structure planning is a mystery and even a threat to most rural landowners, particularly those in Te Puke and Katikati who had been bypassed in favour of the Minden development. Unfortunately, people left the meeting with very few answers and many more questions. The main questions remain:

Why have Rural 3 lifestyle?

Future proofing for planning was repeated a number of times. With up to 200 blocks to be developed in the Minden, this 50 year future proofing has had unbelievable attention and budgeting at the expense of other areas. Justification for this approach was that the lessons learned would then be applied to the other areas, but there is still confusion and the planning cost, internal or not, is mounting.

What are the costs for an average retail sale?

Some wildly varying numbers were produced that would make a developer roar with laughter. Most problems were around how much the extra purchase of a house site could be and where these sites might come from. There are already about 5000 titles with house sites on subdivisions owned by existing landowners in the district. The council wants these desirable properties amalgamated in the rural area and their house sites released to the Rural 3 zones. Landowners will have the difficult decision of selling their spare house sites or selling their existing spare lifestyle blocks. It is not going to be a difficult decision for landowners, but it doesn't look good for Rural 3 planning.

Busby Rd is too small. Can Rural 3 be extended north towards Athenree?

Though an extensive local study has been made in the area, the planner did not want to see the figures and maintained that such a development was impossible. He insisted that the Rural 3 zones had to be close to existing service towns and be approved by NZTA. He didn't mention that Minden is miles away from any service town and therefore should never have been considered and he didn't recognise the local study had already included NZTA consideration.

What now?

Rural and lifestyle sales are in limbo. Prices have collapsed 37 to 50 per cent. Nothing that was given to us at the meeting made any sense at all – especially when we were told that we could now go ahead planning our Rural 3 Busby Road lifestyle block and planners would be visiting to consult and work in the town. If they are coming out to apply the lessons learned on the Minden fiasco we are in trouble. If their consultation includes rejection of the local study, the consultation will be a fiasco. We can forget about dead black swans. Rural 3 dead in the water will be a bigger mess.