Hot on the heels of all the other gaffes, the looney Christchurch City Council is doing its best to drive developers out of the CBD based on dumb greenie policies that mean it is not economically viable to build in the city.
Christchurch’s redrafted central-city plan would put the city’s rebuild and economy at risk, the Property Council says.
The council, which represents commercial landlords and developers, says some property owners will leave town and others will have to raise rents if the plan is not loosened up and tax laws changed.
In a submission to the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority, the council said the scheme’s “ideological” restrictions on buildings favoured a green city over an economically viable one.
The plan is awaiting approval from Earthquake Recovery Minister Gerry Brownlee.
Council president Connal Townsend said building owners should have been consulted on the how much the plan’s “nice ideas” would cost them.
“When building owners get their insurance cheques, the risk is they will take their cash elsewhere, and that is a worrying and dangerous thing,” he said.
“There’s a break-even point. There were so many nice ideas thrown into the plan that it’s an incentive for owners to walk, rather than to reinvest.”
Townsend said that despite being revised, the plan’s restrictions on buildings infringed “common law rights” for owners to replace what they had lost and would make reinvesting in the city too costly.
There is not much point in having a plan if it means that all those who were investing in the CBD end up taking their capital elsewhere. Those councillors with a background in property must be tearing their hair out having to watch clowns destroy the prospect of a decent rebuild.
Next the council will be wanting a light rail system that everyone else has to pay for and will never be commercially viable.
