The Christchurch City Council is reviewing the Christchurch District Plan (incorporates Christchurch and Banks Peninsula and is currently seeking feedback from the community on a number of draft chapters in relation to; commercial, residential, industrial, subdivision and development, transport and contaminated land.
The current 'feedback' phase effectively provides the community with an opportunity to provide the Council with feedback on the proposed District Plan prior to formal notification later this year. At that point, there will be an opportunity for formal submissions to be made.
The review does not cover land in the central city within the four avenues (this area comes under the Central City Recovery Plan). However provisions proposed by the District Plan review are intended to support the recovery of the central city.
The Council is currently holding community meetings in areas where new growth or development is proposed and has invited the public to provide feedback directly to the Council regarding the draft chapters.
Draft options currently being considered for this District Plan review include:
- Commercial activities to operate and develop within identified commercial centres in locations across the city.
- Introducing new classification of commercial centres that recognises the function of existing and new centres, such as "District" eg. Riccarton and "Neighbourhood" eg. Edgeware.
- Replacing existing Business zones with commercial zones which recognise the different scale and form of development anticipated.
- Rezoning centres such as Belfast North to recognise the scale of development and their future role.
- New rules for medium density housing in and around commercial centres eg. Riccarton, Merivale, Papanui and Barrington to allow for residential intensification.
- Rezoning existing car parking areas adjacent to neighbourhood shopping areas to allow for commercial and residential development.
- A new neighbourhood zone covering areas of greenfield land where large-scale residential master planned development will take place.
- Rezoning rural land in North Belfast, adjacent to the Hornby industrial areas and on the corner of Russley Road / Memorial Avenue for industrial activities.
- Consolidating the number of industrial zones to three zones; reflecting the different functions of industrial activity, potential amenity impacts and availability of infrastructure service.
- Amending the 'built form' rules for industrial zones eg. introducing a maximum height limit of 15 metres for 'heavy' industrial areas.
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