Featherston: Small and Tiny Home Development Update

This is an update about the Brookside Featherston development which is starting to get really exciting with Ian and the team at Brookside getting closer to submitting the Resource Consent application.

Here is the news from Ian McComb on recent progress...

The community consultation survey closed with 71 responses with the final trends the same as I reported to you last month. This has allowed us to see your predominantly positive response and understand that the chief concerns were related to the perception of “​too much” ​ in terms of houses, people, cars and/or noise. In response to that concern we have looked at the concept of a ​permitted baseline under the District Plan residential zoning rules and checked the development with these rules. Our assessment is that while the development will have more homes than the District Plan assumes, the impacts could easily be less than a development that was in full compliance with the District Plan. This is due to our provision for mostly 1 and 2 bedroom dwellings; which are currently in short supply in the housing market.

This assessment shows that our proposed approach, including limiting cars, maximum house sizes and site coverage covenants, means that there will potentially be ​22% more open space​ and ​no more cars​ or people than another development could legally generate under the existing Council residential zoning rules.