Developer Kurt Gibbons plans to start construction on Hall St’s Five Mile Villas this month, with the first residents expected to be moved in by Christmas.
He said he intended to hold back 100 of the two-level standalone homes for long-term rentals, and sell 126 on the open market. And, if successful, 113 of those — or 40% of the total development — would have land-use consent for visitor accommodation for up to 356 days
a year.
Mr Gibbons said the visitor accommodation consent gave future owners flexibility.
"Some people may use them as their holiday homes, but also Airbnb them as well.
"Whilst our sales are going great, we’ve had a lot of people say, ‘look, I’m keen, but I want that flexibility."
According to the consent application, the number of units Mr Gibbons was seeking to have visitor accommodation rights represented a "small-scale accommodation activity", capacity constrained by the number of bedrooms in each unit.
The units were also of a smaller scale to a hotel or backpackers and, because they would be individually on-sold, the management of the activity, if approved, would be the responsibility of the future landowners.
The units proposed for the visitor accommodation were "clustered" within the development to ensure a "sense of amenity and neighbourhood cohesion is maintained for the remaining units" which were not proposed to be used for visitor accommodation.
The development has approval for a total of 169 carparks — that was considered adequate for the site when assessed as part of the previous consent.
The new application noted the scale of the development, or capacity within the residential units, was not increasing as a result of the visitor application.
