“It made me feel physically ill” – Chris Bishop on denial of $100m office scheme

27th March 2025 By Paul Yandall | paul@propertyticker.co.nz | @propertyticker

RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has lashed out at the decision to deny consent for James Kirkpatrick Group’s proposed $100m Karangahape Rd mass timber building.

Auckland Council independent hearing commissioners last month rejected the plan to build a Fearon Hay-designed 11-level mass timber office building at 538 Karangahape Rd because it was too big.

In his speech to Project Auckland on Wednesday, Bishop, who is also minister for infrastructure and housing, called the decision “astounding”.

“Frankly, this decision made me feel physically ill,” Bishop told the Project Auckland luncheon audience.

“How can it possibly be that an 11-story building, which includes retail spaces and food and beverage stores, alongside office and commercial spaces for more than 400 people, is turned down in the centre of New Zealand’s biggest city?

“The site it is currently planned to be on is a gravel pit. You heard that correctly. Our current planning laws are so fundamentally broken that a gravel pit in the CBD of Auckland is unable to be developed into a new office building.”

The commissioners’ report, dated 7 February, stated that “the principal concern for the board is the scale of the development”.

Bishop said that might be understandable “if that was said about a development in a small regional town, but is astounding when there is a 20 story building within 100 metres”.

“Putting it simply, and excuse the RMA language, the commissioners when declining this application concluded that the adverse effects related to built form and appearance, streetscape, and historic heritage had not been sufficiently avoided such that the effects on the environment were considered ‘more than minor’.

“This is precisely why we are scrapping the RMA, and replacing it with a radically more enabling system predicated on property rights. As you will have hopefully seen, I announced the architecture for our new system earlier this week.”

The government said on Monday that it planned to replace the RMA with two new acts: a Planning Act, focused on regulating the use, development and enjoyment of land; along with a Natural Environment Act, which will look at the use, protection and enhancement of the natural environment. 

Bishop said that under the changes would have likely led to the proposed development being approved rather than declined.

“What I want to see in our new planning system is that development like this, due to its proximity to rapid transit and the central city, would be able to proceed without the need to gain approval at all – instead proceeding as a permitted activity through a standardised zone.”

Another more technical change would be the removal of non-complying activity status.

“This K-Road development was one of these non-complying activities. Remember that McDonald’s in Wanaka that was declined a few weeks ago? Also a non-complying activity. That Southland windfarm that was declined last week? You guessed it: non-complying activity,” Bishop said.

“8-10% of all resource consent applications every year are for non-complying activities – and therefore face this sometimes impossibly high-bar.

“By removing non-complying activities in our new system, alongside narrowing the effects considered in the planning system, we will making it substantially easier for these big projects to get approval.”