30 August, 2026

Protest crosses harbour to seek maunga body’s help

Queen St action… Devonport protesters outside Auckland Town Hall last week. They asked the Tūpuna Maunga Authority to help them protect Takarunga from the impact of a proposed eight-storey development.

Thirty-six Devonport residents walked up Queen St to the Auckland Town Hall last week to protest against Peninsula Capital’s plans for buildings of up to eight storeys in central Devonport.
Devonport Heritage chair Margot McRae and landscape architect Richard Reid presented to the Tūpuna Maunga Authority’s August meeting, supported by Dame Anne Salmond, whose late husband Jeremy did much of the work to establish a four-storey height limit for the Devonport town centre.
McRae said: “We have come here today to ask the [authority] board to help us protect our maunga, Takarunga, from the impacts of an application by Peninsula Capital to fast track a Mixed Use Development proposal in Devonport.
“The scale and the images of the planned five buildings that range from four to eight storeys high, have caused consternation among the people who love and value the maunga.”
All five buildings exceed the Height Sensitive Area (HSA) overlay in the Auckland Unitary plan by up to 14 metres.

Devonport Heritage has held a public meeting, launched helium balloons to show the projected building heights and collected 1000 signatures on a petition opposing the heights.
“We really appreciate the fine work you have carried out on Takarunga,” McRae told the authority.
“The tihi is looking beautiful and visitors are flocking to this maunga. But the proposed buildings will infringe the heights to such an extent that the views, the connection, the very mana of Takarunga, will be destroyed.”
Under the Fast Track panel process, “we local people will not be able to submit. We have been shut out,” she said.

“However this board will be able to have a say before a panel and we have come here today to urge you to stand firm against this radical infringement of rules which aim to ensure Takarunga remains dominant in the landscape and is never obscured by high-rise apartment buildings.”
The maunga authority’s “opinion is critical to ensuring the developer sticks to the allowable four-storey maximum and ensuring the majestic Takarunga continues to stand above the town.
“A failure to enforce the HSA for this maunga will set a precedent for development at the base of all the maunga of Tamaki Makaurau and we will lose what gives this city its unique identity,” McRae said.
Reid told the authority that the Peninsula Capital project would “create a new foreground of tall buildings which reduce the visual significance and visual integrity of the maunga.
The buildings would also “block local views to the maunga, including the critical arrival point at the wharf,” he said.
“Essentially, the project will significantly diminish Takarunga’s overall contribution as a regionally significant maunga and its position as the pre-eminent feature of the local area.”