Three rounds of submission hearings related to the council’s proposed urban intensification variation start next week, with five days set aside at Arrowtown’s Athenaeum Hall.
The variation seeks to amend the proposed district plan by increasing heights and densities in residential and business zones close to the commercial centres in Queenstown, Arrowtown, Frankton and Wānaka to enable intensification of development.
It stems from a government mandate that urban centres have to zone for denser, more affordable housing.
But it left many Arrowtown residents horrified at the possibility 12m-high housing — 11m plus a pitched roof — could cut a swathe through the historic township.
Under the proposed variation, that height limit could apply to 266 medium density-zoned properties around some of the old Adamson subdivision, which allows 7m, or two-storey, housing.
In a report to the panel, council’s resource management policy principal planner Amy Bowbyes has recommended a rule be amended for Arrowtown’s medium-density zone to enable a permitted building height of 9m — 8m plus a pitched roof — which would enable two-storey development, and in the lower density suburban residential zone she recommends a height of 6.5m, and restricted discretionary building height band of 6.5m to 8m.
Bowbyes says, in her view, the recommended amendments would "better recognise Arrowtown’s character".
Queenstown submissions will be heard from August 4 to 8, at the Queenstown Memorial Centre, before Wānaka submissions are heard between August 25 and 27 at Edgewater Resort.
