With building consents, construction finance and contract negotiation all in their final stages, and after several years in the planning stages all the pieces of the puzzle are knitting together.
We celebrated this most significant milestone with a "Turning the first sod" ceremony on Sunday 29th October 2000. A couple of hundred people attended.
Infrastructure Auckland is a regional funding body charged with solving Auckland's transport and water problems and makes grants to those ends. With the support and encouragement from Waitakere City Council, this application is being made to help fund a number of innovative project features that are over and above that required by council. Specifically we are going to install and demonstrate:
Final working drawings are being prepared for building consent lodgement next week, and with sale and purchase agreements signed for most of stage one units, we are proceeding towards a construction start date on 1 Nov 2000.
Waitakere City Council granted our land use consent on 24.3.00. This is very exciting news and a significant milestone. The project is now well committed to proceeding. Developed design is very nearly complete with the receipt of a detailed fire report to provide for our largely natural timber houses.
The consent itself makes many references to the commitment we are showing toward the environment. And, aspects of the processing were made significantly easier as a direct result of group members submissions toward the District Plan process in 1996.
A public open day was held on site, 26.3.00, to celebrate resource consent. The day was opened by the Minister of Housing - MP Mark Gosche, and with welcoming addresses by other MPs, tangata whenua and local community leaders. In the vicinity of 500 people attended.
The project name was changed about this time away from the pre-site-secured project gestation name of Waitakere Eco-Neighbourhood Cohousing Project.