By Greg Ninness
Housing and Urban Development Minister Phil Twyford says it is likely to take 6-12 months to finalise contracts with development partners for the KiwiBuild project at Unitec in Mt Albert, with construction of homes likely to get underway next year.
In a Double Shot interview with interest.co.nz, Twyford said the Government was talking to possible development partners as part of its plans to build 3000 to 4000 new homes on the site.
At the head of the queue is the Tamaki Makaurau iwi collective, which has first right of refusal on any government land in Auckland that's repurposed, as part of their Treaty of Waitangi settlement terms with the Crown.
Twyford said iwi involvement in the project could take several forms, including buying into the project and being a co-developer alongside the Government, or taking on just part of the project to develop themselves.
"They have ambition, some of them have serious capital behind them and they understand the need for affordable housing," Twyford said.
"My hope is that over the next 6-12 months we get all of the development partnerships with iwi and anyone else we want to partner with locked down and we get the master planning completed.
"Already a lot of the work's done on that site so we don't have to reinvent the wheel, and my hope is that by next year we'll be building on site," he said.
At present the plans for the site are being drawn up by HLC, the Housing NZ subsidiary set up in 2006 to master plan the redevelopment of the former Hobsonville Air Force base into the well regarded housing development now known as Hobsonville Point.
Hobsonville Point will eventually contain around 4500 homes, making it slightly larger in its scope than the Mt Albert project.
HLC has also done the planning work for the redevelopment of land at Avondale, Mt Roskill, Mangere and Northcote into more intensive housing projects.
However HLC's role could be superseded by the Urban Development Authority (UDA), a government super agency Twyford is setting up that would work alongside local councils and speed up intensive development projects, not only in Auckland but throughout the country.
Twyford said he hoped to have the legislation establishing the UDA introduced by the end of the year, but it would probably be the end of next year before that was passed.
Once the UDA was established it would take over the management of existing KiwiBuild projects as well as spearhead planning for new ones.
Intensification around the rail network
However the Government was not waiting for the UDA to be in place before undertaking new projects.
In addition to the Mt Albert project, it was also looking at possible intensive housing projects in Manukau, Panmure and Henderson, Twyford said.
"We really want to to try and deliver a lot of intensification around the rail network," he said.
"We'll be announcing more of those in the coming weeks and months.
"And there are also some very good opportunities outside of Auckland.
"In Wellington, Tauranga and one or two other places, councils are coming to us and saying, 'we think there's a great opportunity here'."
While it was likely that the UDA would develop the plans for the new projects and then engage private developers to complete them, it was also possible that the Government could get directly involved in building some of the KiwiBuild homes as a non-profit developer.
"We thought with KiwiBuild that one of the ways we could push the price of housing down is for the Government to act as developer itself, take on some of that risk and forgo the developer's profit margin, and that may be part of the mix as well," Twyford said.
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