Has Queenstown exceeded capacity?
Queenstown risks destroying the very reason people visit the destination. With the sewerage plant overflowing, how much further can the town grow?
The ‘Jewel in the Crown’ of New Zealand’s tourism industry relied on its expansive and undisturbed natural environment. Holiday cribs/baches and lodges, however, have become Air BnBs or replaced with hotels, resorts, or bolthole mansion-sized second homes. The town is now a city, locked in a tug-of-war between proponents of over-tourism and urban sprawl.
Comparing the types of building consents issued by the council with the occupancy rates of hospitality and residential dwellings, a pattern emerges. Take into account who occupies those buildings and the traffic generated by the occupants of those buildings, the problem is self-evident.
A drive through recent greenfield suburbs demonstrates the problem. Residential homes designed for young families instead have as many as five vehicles either parked on the front lawn or straddling the narrow street. Many builders build a house for themselves, mass produce several nearby, rent out their old home, build a new home in the next greenfield development, and repeat the pattern.
Many of those vehicles congest intersections at the same time each day, going to the next construction site, loading up with materials, shopping, or travelling to the nearest school. Meanwhile, thousands arrive on flights and venture through that gauntlet into town.
A family home generates on average six vehicle movements a day. A rental home generates ten vehicle movements a day. A construction site generates as many as a dozen vehicle movements a day, often involving heavy vehicles.
It’s a self-feeding monster. To build the recently fast-tracked urban sprawl projects, as many as 300 dwellings need to be built just to accommodate those building them.
The problem is this: What will those additional builders do once those developments are completed?
The new build industry is a virus. Every time the motorway extended north of Auckland, new suburbs appeared. It started in Wairau Park, then Albany, Silverdale, Orewa, Warkworth, and every bypassed town until Whangarei. Local chambers of commerce at each bypassed town feared lost business and resident sprawl was seen as the solution.
Look at what’s happened between Frankton and Gibbston Valley, Frankton and Kingston, Arthur’s Point and Arrowtown, or Cromwell and Lake Hawea.
North & South magazine published a feature article in the 1990s, predicting tradespeople as ‘The New Gentry.’ The National Party saw tradespeople as swing voters. In response to the Global Financial Crisis, John Key borrowed heavily to fund motorways and then opened the immigration floodgates to trigger a housing crisis. The Canterbury Earthquakes saw an exodus to holiday homes in Wanaka, triggering a building boom that hasn't slowed down.
I’ve prepared hundreds of resource consent applications, intensifying urban lots and carving up productive rural land. First hand, I have seen the worst aspects of opportunistic greed. I even lobbied for changes to laws which only fuelled an onslaught of fear-of-missing-out (FOMO) armchair expert ‘developers’ and ‘flippers’ obsessed with home improvement shows.
The Reserve Bank is frustrated by the lack of tools available to it to counter the country’s – and media’s – obsession with property speculation. Land prices aren’t part of the Consumer Price Index. With housing becoming less affordable, a higher proportion of incomes service mortgages and rent, and less disposable income is spent on household items that dictate inflation. The resulting low inflation keeps mortgage rates low. It’s a vicious spiral.
On average, tradespeople earn more than those in the tourism sectors. The competition for rental accommodation squeezes many into tighter accommodation or out of the area.
A colleague who moved to the area was advised by a real estate agent to buy a rental property, turf out the tenants, live in it, or use it as an Air BnB. Reducing supply for rentals boosted property prices.
Because of escalating rent levels, short term rental sites like Air BnB were banned in New York City, Barcelona, Berlin, Paris, France, San Francisco, Amsterdam, and London.
The proliferation of lifestyle blocks has serious adverse economic and environmental effects. Farmers compete with golf courses and ornamental gardens for water. New residents complain about rural activities. Landscaped screening, such as hedges and bunds, line roads that once provided an open and scenic landscape. The overall increase in land value drive farmers out, meaning that produce travels further to market.
What’s happened to Queenstown was highly predictable. Ski resorts in the USA were a preview of future attractions.
Unfortunately, opportunists have used those towns as a template to repeat here.
With economic growth reliant on population and property, the solutions aren’t pretty. Urban development in Greytown and Martinborough came to a grinding halt when the council stopped new connections to sewage plants that had reached capacity. Developers then concentrated on Featherston.
Queenstown’s sewage plant is in a similar situation. A proposed development in Dalefield is also in the catchment of the polluted Lake Hayes.
The area is in a unique situation where it is more productive that people visit Queenstown rather than live there. By simply halting greenfield development, the new build tradespeople would leave, leaving housing for the tourism and hospitality sector. Traffic congestion will be gone. The tradespeople left could service more productive industries and maintain an attractive environment.
But the mayor is more concerned about expanding the ratepayer base. Newly appointed "Minister for the South Island" James Meager's solution was to "build more houses." But where will the sewerage go?
The last thing that Queenstown wants is to crap in their own nest.
Grant is a former planner, independent hearings commission, and Parliamentary researcher.
An analogy
In the same way that J.R.R. Tolkien and George Lucas themed Lord of the Rings and Star Wars on the world order, Jim Henson styled Fraggle Rock on the effects of human nature's demand on resources. The building industry in Queenstown behaves much like the Doozers, who keep building regardless, feeding the play-oriented Fraggles so they can keep building before the place is cluttered up. Here is Jim explaining the role of the Doozers: