The 103-year-old Edmund Anscombe-designed house on Stuart Street in Dunedin. Photo: Supplied / Southern Heritage Trust
A heritage organisation in Dunedin says its devastated to learn a historic home in the central city is set to be demolished - despite fierce opposition from the community.
Southern Heritage Trust chairperson Jo Galer said it was shocking to discover the Edmund Anscombe-designed house on Stuart Street will be torn down to make way for apartments.
Last October, Elim Group applied to the Dunedin City Council for consent to fell a protected lime tree and demolish the house at 284 Stuart St that was built in the 1920s, in order to build a complex of around 30 apartments.
The application was publicly notified, due to the proposed removal of the protected tree.
Galer said the Southern Heritage Trust, along with close to 100 others including Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, made submissions against the application.
"The tree was the only thing that was marked on the district plan as having any protection and yet this architectural masterpiece by Edmund Anscombe had not been protected."
She said the trust was shocked to receive an email this week from the council saying that after the existing application was withdrawn, the same developer lodged a new one that had since been approved and granted resource consent.
It did not have to be publicly notified as the new design was built around the protected tree.
"We are bitterly disappointed, we were shocked to realise that this building could be demolished at any hour, any day and we are horrified that our elected representatives and our council have deemed it not important enough to at least inform those who were very interested and keen and passionate about this building."
Galer said it was an anomaly that the house wasn't protected by Heritage New Zealand and that the Dunedin City Council's district plan rules were encouraging developers to eye up historic sites to build on.
"It sets a precedent in the city. The council's own planning laws are not fit for purpose when we are a city where heritage is actually our identity and everybody around New Zealand realises it."
Galer said the trust was unhappy, did not want to see the building come down, and was working to see what action could be taken to save it.
'Depth of feeling' around property
Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga director southern region Christine Whybrew said while the house was not on the New Zealand Heritage List Rārangi Kōrero nor scheduled in Dunedin City Council's district plan, it had significant heritage values.
"The community response to the proposed demolition and replacement highlights the depth of feeling in Dunedin for their unique and valued heritage places, which we applaud.
"The demolition of this building will result in the irreversible and wholesale loss of these values."
A Dunedin City Council spokesperson said the home at 284 Stuart Street was not a protected heritage building under the city's district plan heritage schedule. It had undergone a heritage assessment and had met the criteria for scheduling, but the resource consent application arrived before the next plan change process.
The home was one of 300 suggested or identified as potentially meeting the heritage schedule criteria. Since the last plan change in 2021, 95 assessments had been completed and a plan change process was due to begin later this year.
The spokesperson said the second application for the development did not meet the threshold for public notification, and a letter had been provided to submitters explaining so.
"The proposed removal of the significant tree was the reason the original application was publicly notified. Once the second application was received, and the removal of the tree was no longer included, there were no grounds to publicly notify the new application."
The Dunedin City Council on Tuesday voted to endorse a LGNZ remit, proposed by Gisborne District Council, to mitigate the deterioration of unoccupied buildings and address the issue of "demolition by neglect".