Overall seems like a pretty good result. Disappointing that the heritage buildings will still be protected, but sounds like that was rejected on technicalities rather than due to any desire to retain those buildings.

From the NZIA About the awards programme (which took me a bit to find):

The awards judges assess each project in terms of the following:

The relationship of the building to its site, context and presence

The degree of consistency and completeness in expressing the relationship between concept, form and structure

Light, colour, texture and spatial qualities

Structure, construction, materials and issues of durability and detail

Environmental performance

User satisfaction, value to the client and acceptability of solutions to the brief

Contribution to the advancement of architecture as a discipline and the enhancement of the human spirit

It seems like there’s a panel of jurors that visit the sites as well as meeting with the architects and clients

Some other sources:

• District Plan decisions will allow Wellington to grow and thrive - Wellington City Council
• Wellington City Council officially passes an ambitious new District Plan - the Spinoff live updates

I know, been kinda conditioned to expect the worst but yeah this seems like great progress. Still has to go through Chris Bishop but from what I understand he’s not likely to oppose this stuff.

• Major gas leak closes street in Petone (contractor hit a gas main) (yesterday)
• https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/511041/dozens-of-people-evacuated-over-suspected-chemical-leak-in-central-wellington (2 days ago)

All completely unrelated but interesting, to me at least, nonetheless.

There’s been a few notable gas leaks recently - the other day a street in Petone was closed, and I seem to recall there was an evacuation of some sort somewhere a day or so prior to that.

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Yeah I’m not quite sure why it’s being done this way - which makes me suspicious. On the surface it seems to me like this is in effect an interest-free loan of $32M with the condition that Reading fix up the site and make it into something viable once more.

I guess the gotcha is that it would be an upfront cost for the WCC which is already having to make big cuts. You could also argue about the optics of having to pay Reading to actually do something with the site, and not just leave it derelict as they have done for the last several years.

But if this pans out, and helps reverse the decline of Courtney Place, then sounds like an okay plan.

Something to check out this weekend if you’ve got little ones (though Sunday’s forecast looks a bit wet)

I couldn’t find a list of what ground leases the council currently has, but it looks like they typically are things like sports clubrooms, community halls, hobby groups etc:

Examples: Proposed new leases and licence on recreation reserve and Wellington Town Belt Land, outlines proposals to establish leases to Capital BMX Club Incorporated, Wellington Beekeepers Association Incorporated, and Port Nicholson & Poneke Cycling Club Incorporated

These are all leased extremely cheaply ($1 per year for 100m² for the Beekeepers club as an example) presumably because they are community focused and non-commercial.

I’d be worried that this option would amount to selling off community spaces to commercial developers (though it could be that the council has other leases that are already commercially developed that it’s simply seeking to sell off to the existing tenants)

I could be wrong but my understanding is that a ground lease is a situation where you own some land and rent it out to someone else to develop, typically for a long-term duration (like decades). In this case it could be that the council is currently leasing land that it owns, but will be looking to instead sell that land permanently

That’s the beauty of Pancake Day - you can have pancakes at any time!

My understanding is that this report will be used to set the rules / limits on housing density in Wellington going forward. There was a “Spatial Plan” produced by the council a year or so back which kinda set the goals, but this new District Plan would be the official, and seemingly very watered down, document that dictates that can be built where. This previous article form the Spinoff describes it better: A simple guide to Wellington’s District Plan and why you should care about it.

But yeah it seems really weird and even inappropriate that this group is making decisions about the need for housing, what is / isn’t mass transit, etc.

Was it any of these?

• Painted lady butterfly
• Copper butterfly

29°C in Wellington right now.

I would guess around 3mm for that one. I’ve never seen them either but happened to look down and saw it crawling on me while gardening

I’m in Wellington, but they’re apparently everywhere - just we tend not to notice them since they’re pretty small and like live under leaves and stuff

It might be more the lack of options in Jville, but yeah it’s a weird detail to include in the story.

Also always worth checking swimming conditions before heading out: https://www.lawa.org.nz/explore-data/swimming/

I think those were Nadine potatoes if I recall correctly