EDITORIAL: The battle of Balmoral matters to your neighbourhood

Ewan McDonald | 29th July 2009

Wiremu St could be any one of ... oh, who knows? 10,000 suburban roads in Auckland. Or maybe 100,000.

It's not particularly long; it's dead straight; wide grassed verges with council-planted trees, neat 40s and 50s bungalows behind the hedges, driveways down the side. Speed bumps, chicanes.

Sometimes kids play in the street, or ride their bikes, after school and on weekends. There's even a little, white, stucco church and primary school, a daycare centre. It's a quiet, family neighbourhood.

Mostly. For one end of Wiremu St runs into Dominion Rd, the hustle-bustle-jostle of Auckland's busiest arterial routes: all-day, all-night buses and trucks and cars. The
Balmoral shops have morphed into one of New Zealand's most cosmopolitan corners. Almost every one of the United Nations' member states is represented by an eatery, a cyber cafe, or a dollar shop.

Just 50m from the end of Wiremu St, a major junction is the Auckland 2009 edition of the
Monopoly board: The Warehouse and a BP station on one corner, KFC on the second, an
Indian curry house on the third and the swings, slides and roundabouts of Potter's Park on the fourth.

A six-lane boulevard races impatient shoppers along the last kilometre to the promised brands of Westfield St Lukes - if you think it's got size issues now, wait for morbid obesity when it becomes the country's largest mall - which already has a McDonald's.

That road is just one strip of old-time, quarter-acre sections from ... yes, Wiremu St.

Balmoral is where inner-city Auckland ends and the suburbs begin.

This is why the two-year battle between the Wiremu St residents and McDonald's - and we should not leave the Auckland City Council planners and the resource-consent
commissioners out of this - is so important to every local neighbourhood in the city (that's the city as it is, and as it shall be).

Let's recap. The hamburger giant wants to build a 159-seat eatery near the corner of
Wiremu St and Balmoral Rd. It will be the one of the largest McDonald's in New Zealand. It wanted to operate 24/7.

It has been estimated to create an extra 14,000 "vehicle movements'' (to use town planner jargon) a week. By the company's own website, that is a 4 per cent increase on
traffic at one of the busiest intersections in Auckland.

The company bought the site, formerly a furniture store. It estimates about 45,000
people live within a 2km radius.

Wiremu St residents quickly told McDonald's they didn't want fries with ... anything.
Auckland City Council received 872 submissions on the plans; 860 of those opposed the idea. Honourable mentions to the then-local MP and Prime Minister, who stepped outside convention and sent a letter of support to the Balmoral Community Group; also to the Eden/Albert Community Board and, in a historic move, all three then-city councillors from Eden/Albert, who wrote individual submissions against the proposal.

Naturally most of the concerns centred around traffic noise and disruption to the residents' lives and property values. Locals also pointed out that 27 children walk past the drive-in site on their school walking-bus every morning and afternoon.

Council planners recommended the application be declined. The next step in the
consent process was a hearing before independent commissioners. Which is
where it becomes a case of "my lawyer's bigger than your lawyer'' and "my
expert witness knows more than your expert witness, so there''.

The commissioners held eight full days of hearings in the Mt Eden War Memorial Hall, on
the other side of the traffic lights. Locals pleaded; they set up a website and paid for lawyers and experts.

McDonald's got - there is no other word for it - smart-ass. They put in an application for a fruit and vegetable store, just to see if the commissioners would say that was okay but a burger barn wasn't. The lawyers could have fun with that one.

They asked the commissioners and the residents to believe that they had gone to
"significant lengths to develop a restaurant design that would fit in with the Balmoral
shopping centre''.

Titoki and red flax would be planted along Wiremu St to screen the carpark and "improve the existing view''. Lighting and noise would comply with the district plan and bylaws.

Then the big stick came out: McDonald's lawyer, Richard Brabant, said residents had to
understand they did not live in a secluded suburb. "If you're living on the edge of a business area you have got to have different expectations in amenities.'' Too bad if,
like the community group secretary's 66-year-old mum, you bought your house and paid your mortgage and your rates for years in a nice, quiet, tree-lined suburban street with a church and a primary school and ...

The lawyer didn't stop there. If the plans were turned down, he threatened, McDonald's
would take the case to the Environment Court.

As it turns out, he needn't have worried. The commissioners this week granted permission for the almost-biggest of Big Macs. But they didn't roll over to the greedy
corporate completely. No, sirree. They won't let them put up 10m - would that be super-size? - Golden Arches.

McDonald's managing director, Mark Hawthorne, got his PR consultants to put out a
written statement that the company was "naturally pleased''.

Justine Tringham, secretary of the community group, was surprised at the decision
because city council representatives at the hearing seemed to agree the development should not go ahead. "What this shows is that the commissioners don't care about residential amenity,'' she said. Mrs Tringham and her neighbours are right.

One avenue remains open for Wiremu St - an appeal to the Environment Court. That
will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars for a community that has already spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on this two-year battle.

Perhaps the Auckland City Council - whose planners, community board and councils have
already shown their opposition - might like to pass the hat around on behalf of their
constituents. It is, after all, a major test case for the rights of a neighbourhood in 2009.

As Auckland grows the head-on crash between houses and businesses, between
parks and factories, will only intensify. If we end up with one over-arching council determining planning matters, communities like Balmoral will be removed from decisions that irrevocably change their neighbourhoods ... even the route that the school walking bus can take.

And then there are the proposed changes to the Resource Management Act. There has already been a 900 per cent increase in the filing fee for the Environment Court. It's suggested that judges will be able to demand a massive bond be paid before folks like
the Balmoral Community Group can lodge their case - it's called "security for costs'' and
intended to discourage frivolous appeals.

For the good people of Wiremu St, this case is anything but frivolous. Every other
neighbourhood in Auckland should feel the same.

- Ewan McDonald is editor of The Aucklander.