Grey Lynn Up-zone Update

About 60 people attended our information evening on 25 January to hear about Auckland Council’s up-zoning of selected Grey Lynn streets.

We gave attendees a quick update on what we’ve been doing over the last 3 years to represent the community on the Draft Auckland Unitary Plan, which is now the Proposed Auckland Unitary Plan.

We explained how new maps had come out right on Christmas, which had changed the zoning of a number of Grey Lynn streets from “Single House” to “Mixed Housing Suburban” or “Mixed Housing Urban”.

Single House: up to 8m high (2 storeys) and a density of one dwelling per 600m2.

Mixed Housing Suburban: up to 8m high (2 storeys) and a density of one dwelling per 400m2 site area for one-off dwellings, down to one dwelling per 200m2 for 4+ dwellings.

Mixed Housing Urban: up to 10m high (3 storeys) and a density of one dwelling per 300m2 or 250m2 site area for one-off dwellings, down to no density limits for 4+ dwellings.

Those present got into working groups based on their street and discussed how they felt about the situation, so that we could represent their views at the upcoming 079 and 081 hearings.

We asked attendees to talk to their neighbours, write down why the up-zoning should or shouldn’t be rejected, and send us photos.

Most have now done this and it was all collated into a major document which we presented to the Independent Hearings Panel last Thursday and will present again later in February.

Why has your street been up-zoned?
Attendees asked us why their street, or a cluster of houses in their street, might have been up-zoned. It’s hard to discern a rationale but it does seem to closely map streets where the planners have deemed development to have eroded heritage and character benchmarks, with the pre-1944 overlay therefore being removed.