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Opportunity Party leader Geoff Simmons is looking for a hole in one on a par five.
In other words, you need to get enough votes to enter Parliament, find a coalition partner that allows your party to come to power, and then have enough bargaining power to take advantage of a Wellington-centric idea in a change of legislation.
Then, if he gets the legislation changed, he might run the bulldozers to turn a quarter of Wellington’s Berhampore golf course into 1,000 homes.
It is a measure that would require a change to the Wellington City Belt Law, which means that under the law, the land is preserved as public space for public recreation.
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A big obstacle?
“It is, but so is our housing crisis,” Simmons said, on a day when an ironically large number of golfers were using the Wellington City Hall course.
TOM HUNT / Things
Opportunity Match leader Geoff Simmons at Berhampore Golf Course in Wellington. He wants to convert part of it to land for housing. Party members map out an area of the field that could hold 100 people.
Simmons estimates that 1,000 homes could be built on a quarter of the golf course’s land under the Wellington City Council’s draft Space Plan. He envisaged another room for recreation, and the other half as a golf course, which would have to go down from 18 to nine holes.
Wellington City Councilor Teri O’Neill, who has the portfolio of parks, beaches and open spaces, said that while there was some validity to the idea, it would not get off the ground due to the protection that the land had under the Law of the municipal belt. .
Ross Giblin
Berhampore Golf Course, Island Bay. It is run by the Mornington Golf Club. There are calls for the land to be used for housing.
But the Miramar Golf Club land, next to Wellington Airport, was a better option for housing, as it did not have the same protection, he said.
Rongotai Labor MP Paul Eagle was actively working on the idea of the Miramar golf course, which would see the government buy half of the club’s land and convert it to housing, while rebuilding Strathmore Park behind it.
The airport already owned the other half of the field, but would be open to see if the airport could sell that as well.
Monique Ford / Stuff
Councilwoman Teri O’Neill considered the Miramar golf course a better housing bet.
“If we’re going to talk about golf courses, Geoff Simmons got the wrong golf course,” Eagle said.
The Wellington City Belt Act of 2016, which added more protection to the city belt, which had been around for more than a century, showed how much Wellington residents wanted to retain public lands, he said.
“If you were a local resident and engaged with the electorate, you would know that the people of Wellington have fought to keep this as a green space,” Eagle said.
Kevin Stent
One of the camouflaged cameras that Wellington City Council installed on the Berhampore golf course in 2018.
Simmons and Eagle are candidates in the Rongotai electorate.
The idea of converting part of the Berhampore course into residential land has already been a political dead duck.
Conor Hill, the unsuccessful candidate for mayor of Wellington in 2019, proposed to cut the 18-hole golf course in half and create a nine-hectare public recreation space and a nine-hectare housing development with affordable housing and housing elements. Social. Hill, who came fifth in the mayoral vote, said he would pressure the government to change the legislation.
In 2018, the Wellington City Council suggested reducing the golf course from 18 to nine holes, but quickly abandoned the idea, but not before it was revealed that it had installed spy cameras on the course to see how many people were using the course.
