More than 100 houses planned for Wanaka

Allan Dippie
Allan Dippie
The final piece of the puzzle in Wanaka's inner residential tract will start to be filled in next year, as the town's most prolific developer launches his latest project.

Allan Dippie yesterday announced his next development, which will produce 100-plus lots over 17ha.

The project is a joint venture between Mr Dippie's Wanaka companies Willowridge Developments Ltd and Orchard Road Holdings Ltd, which bought the site known as Alpha Ridge a few months ago, from descendants of Sir Percy Sargood.

Sir Percy bought it as part of the much larger Wanaka Station in 1912 and it has been zoned residential for decades.

''It is the last really big site in that kind of inner Wanaka [area] that's remained undeveloped there,'' Mr Dippie said.

''Once this piece of land is gone, what we'll be doing in the future will be quite a long way out, compared to this.''

Mr Dippie is a co-director of Orchard Road Holdings with his brother Martin, and a co-director of Willowridge Developments with wife Elizabeth.

The companies' newest subdivision will join together Willowridge's Meadowstone and West Meadows subdivisions. It will be known as Meadowstone's ''Alpha Series''.

''All those stages we've been doing lately, they've just sold a lot quicker than what we thought, actually, so it just suddenly dawned on us that we better start thinking about the future.

''These new ones are going to go well, because I think there's a lot of people who've admired this land over the years.''

Mr Dippie said the land was geologically interesting, as it sat on a series of terraces above the township that mark the edge of the glacial retreat that formed Lake Wanaka.

It is on the same terrace as part of the Wanaka golf course, with views up the lake.

While the site's zoning allowed for more than 200 homes, a ''less is better'' approach was being taken and development would be restricted to about half that number, including many much larger sites than the zone's 700sq m minimum.

Resource consent has not been applied for yet and a master plan is still to be developed in conjunction with potential clients.

''It's actually a really interesting way of going about development ... we're going to ask the clients what their ideas are, what size section they'd like, where particularly on the site they'd prefer to be, all those sorts of things.''

The project will be marketed after Christmas and the first of three open days held on January 3.

The subdivision will be completed in three stages over four or five years and the first stage will be sold in March.

Mr Dippie said 2014 had been the busiest year in Willowridge Developments' 20-year history. The company had expanded its civil construction staff to more than 25 and invested in a large amount of new equipment.

He predicted the impact on Wanaka's economy would be considerable.

''We're kind of the very start of a long chain ... we start designing and constructing these things and then building them and then there's a huge multiplier effect and so many different business that are positively affected, right through the whole process.''

lucy.ibbotson@odt.co.nz

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