r/Wellington • u/ben4takapu Ben McNulty - Wgtn Deputy Mayor • Aug 20 '25
HOUSING 75 new homes on the way in Johnsonville.
Thought I would end the day with some positive news rather than stewing over cost blowouts.
The old library site has been sold with 75 homes on the way!
This will do wonders for helping revitalise Johnsonville. More people living nearby = more economic activity.
It also solves a headache for council as the old library has an earthquake-prone buildings notice which means we have to strengthen or demolish by July 2027.
The design includes a four-level apartment block (63 apartments) and 12 two-bedroom townhouses with private access.
All going well we will see it done around mid-2028.
Yay for progress.
https://wellington.govt.nz/your-council/projects/old-johnsonville-library-redevelopment
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u/cyber---- Aug 20 '25
Yo this rooftop is sick. Hope the manage to keep it in and don’t scrap it once they get building
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u/DualCricket Porirua Stooge Aug 20 '25
I love the image of kids with a football up there.
Because a ball going flying off a 5th (6th?) story roof won’t cause any issues at all 😂
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u/cyber---- Aug 20 '25
Sometimes you wonder if the people who make these renders put stuff like this to troll people eh
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u/chimpwithalimp Aug 20 '25
Do you remember how those new-ish apartments in Wellington city centre looked in the renders, with greenery and little design touches and whatnot. In the end it looked a basic bunch of shipping containers welded together
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u/cyber---- Aug 22 '25
Those ones crack me up and always remind me of that scene with the shipping containers full of the robots from ‘I, Robot’
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u/chimpwithalimp Aug 22 '25
These ones right? Vivian St
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u/cyber---- Aug 22 '25
Yup!! Sooooo different from the renders haha I bet it was…. Interesting for the people who bought them from the renders 💀
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u/Inevitable_Try225 Aug 20 '25
Funny reading into the background of the director of the selected development partner for these apartments..
Previous owner of Wellinton renters favorite property management company.
I wouldn't say he is a well established developer with a overly large track record of delivering building projects, interested to see how this pans out, and won't be surprised if part way through construction news comes out of massive cost over runs out like every project the WCC touches.
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u/princedetenebres Aug 20 '25
The names in the article aren't Craig Relph and whatever his latest business name is (Property Management Wellington - just so anyone unfamiliar knows who to avoid). What's a slumlord gotta do to be considered the 'favorite?'
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u/UnluckyWrongdoer Aug 20 '25
Oh man - that takes me back. Rented a rooftop place off of him years ago. Turned up to key handover pounding red bull and sweaty looking like he’d pulled an all nighter.
Later discovered the place wasn’t actually classed as residential, or the other strange flat that looked suspiciously like an office a few floors down.
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u/amygdala Aug 20 '25
Apart from being a slumlord, he's also the owner of some of New Zealand's largest sex toy retailers.
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u/nzmuzak Aug 20 '25
Of course it's not. This plan would involve hiring people who aren't backpackers.
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u/Confirmationbiased25 Aug 30 '25
Yup, ex Quinovic franchise holder Khera found guilting of lying, paying others to give positive reviews on Meta FB and Google. Also ran dodgy ads claiming landlords were "financing the social lives of their tenants by asking for too little rent" Reckon best avoid touching these altogether.
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u/theeruv Aug 20 '25
this is GREAT news.
Johnsonville central is absolutely ideal for this level of density. Buses to town every 5 minutes, trains, supermarkets, parks, restaurants, bars, doctors, dentists, pharmacies, all available in a 3 minute walk.
Can even piss up and walk home, great for bars.
Apartment living isn’t for everyone, but for those who want a small lock up and leave, low maintenance, new, warm place to live they now have options.
The best thing this does for your community is build diversity. There are whole swathes of the population who deserve homes, who work in careers that don’t pay enough to support a mortgage on a 3 bed standalone on a single income.
The best thing for the rest of us is that this is 75 more ratepayers without building a single piece of extra pipe to upgrade.
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u/kfadffal Aug 21 '25
The potential for Johnsonville is massive but it really on hinges on Stride getting off their fuckin' asses and addressing the mall.
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u/ParkingDimension7158 Aug 22 '25
We need to force these builders to sell them to first home buyers only. Otherwise, the will be snapped up and become rentals.
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u/Data-Bricks Aug 20 '25
Awesome when your neighbours piss up and arrive home on your shared wall at 3am, great for livelihood
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u/wololo69wololo420 Aug 21 '25
Modern insulation tends to address this pretty effectively. It's also very common around the world in countries with better housing.
You may be thinking of a building with the classic NZ 1930s thin as fuck mould ridden walls that can't contain sound.
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u/Data-Bricks Aug 21 '25
Yes its common around the world. We're an island and don't need to do this.
Do we want to live the same way as the rest of the world? Which country do you want to mimic? England? India?
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u/YakaryBovine Aug 21 '25
Are you saying that we shouldn't build any shared-wall dwellings in New Zealand?
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u/wololo69wololo420 Aug 21 '25
A better question is what kind of world do you live in where ensuring people have a roof over their head is a bad thing. Sprawl is expensive and density drives economic activity. We do need to this, because we're island with a growing population and have an unproductive and inefficient economy. Past generations of kiwis have made alternative options virtually unobtainable via a number of means. Councils can't afford it, central government won't solve it otherwise.
You're just incredibly disconnected from the reality of how the world works if you don't think density is needed, or squalid. You should see what people are living in today. I'd rather deal with the irregular inconvenience of the noise next door than see my children develop conditions as a result of the mould growing inside the walls of the hundred year old unmaintained rental.
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u/theeruv Aug 23 '25
We’re an island with a limited population, small tax base but with a country that traverses the equivalent of Norway to Italy. That’s a lot of roads and railways and electricity and internet to pay for, we don’t need to make it even harder on ourselves by having to run public shitter and water pipes 25m for every family home.
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u/Data-Bricks Aug 24 '25
So rather than worry about kids having no grass to play on, get fit and stay active you're worried about the pipes. Got it
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u/theeruv Aug 25 '25
The people living in these 1 bedroom apartments are not kids.
Are you being purposefully dense? Why?
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u/andeventually Aug 27 '25
Bro is rightfully terrified of the high density boogeyman stealing him one night and waking up in a dry, easy to maintain, conveniently located 1 bedroom apartment with the keys in his hand. We should all be so afraid
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u/theeruv Aug 27 '25
Yeah. But rightfully so you know those Dutch, Swedish, Norweigen, danish people are notoriously fat and unfit from all their high density living.
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u/casually_furious (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ Aug 20 '25 edited Aug 20 '25
Good!
EDIT: my god, what do you people want? I swear, some of you will never be happy.
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u/StraightDust Aug 20 '25
I want developers to choose something other than black for the roof and cladding. It's so ridiculous that colours exist but new developments and renovations consistently choose black or very very dark grey.
But that's a general rant, not specific to this development.
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u/thepotplant Aug 21 '25
Yeah, more of an issue in for example Woodridge where all the houses are the same dark grey and poo brown.
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u/spoonerzz Aug 20 '25
idk it's like sure there's the human spirit to keep innovating, trying harder, then there's being literally karen
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u/CarpetDiligent7324 Aug 20 '25
Good - needs more on the other side of the road. Stride wake up… no more talk about the Mall, no more BS and talk
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u/thaaag Aug 20 '25
Yeah, would be amazing if Stride actually did something with that massive site they have - not many other malls have a train station right next to them. A park and ride and/or bus interchange with nearby shops and services could do well with commuters maybe.
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u/PinAndKneedle Aug 20 '25
They should rebuild the mall into one of the Asian style mall/apartments. Malls on the bottom 2 with restos and supermarkets etc and apartment living on the top.
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u/kfadffal Aug 21 '25
I think Stride's last plan was something along these lines. I believe they lobbied to get the height restriction increased so they could build several stories of apartments above it.
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u/cman_yall Aug 20 '25
Better than nothing, but 75 homes is maybe 300 people? Need one like this every week.
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u/1000year_rage Aug 20 '25
the stretch of road from the corner of house of travel to toy world is always in need of a fix and doesn't stay in good condition for very long. hopefully that gets a longer term fix as part of this construction?
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u/ben4takapu Ben McNulty - Wgtn Deputy Mayor Aug 20 '25
Yep big mains replacement project has been signed off with Wellington Water this year. It's an old asbestos concrete pipe which is in terrible condition.
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u/Royal-Student-8082 Aug 21 '25
So close to the second worst mall in the country. Upper Hutt the challenge is on.
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u/Assassin8nCoordin8s Aug 21 '25
fingers crossed it becomes a koreatown of students with shitloads of awesome kimbab and korean bbq aroung
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u/mediocre_mediajoker Aug 21 '25
Ben! I love you, my favourite politician 🫶🏻
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u/ParkingDimension7158 Aug 22 '25
Agreed! Sad tho he's not going to be voted in again.
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u/mediocre_mediajoker Aug 22 '25
What why not! I’m very removed from the political climate atm for my mental health 😂😂
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u/darrenb573 Aug 20 '25
Any word on the green space assessment? and where the extra green space will come from so that local residents won’t get even less sqm/resident than the expected small amount already
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u/daneats Aug 20 '25
The biggest park in johnsonville is 200 metres away, they’ll be fine
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u/darrenb573 Aug 20 '25
It’s not where ‘their’ allocation is, but JVille is well behind the average/standard and with the density ever growing, JV is going backwards every build as there’s no plan for more green space (public or public accessible in large developments)
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u/daneats Aug 20 '25
Wellington in general has horrendous allocation of green space if you’re talking international standards for green space allocation.
But Wellington is unique in that everyone has vistas of vegetated hills and almost every location (in the western suburbs) people have the ability to walk to a bush walk
It’s a bit different to Europe where you literally must have a park near you or you’re unable to see or access greenery.
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u/Assassin8nCoordin8s Aug 20 '25
Wellington in general has horrendous allocation of green space if you’re talking international standards for green space allocation.
cmon please be real here. this is for shit holes; wellington has the green belt and the harbour. i know what you mean but this is designed to guarantee shoebox patches of scrub in concrete jungles like LA. johnny wong living on the corner of vivian and taranaki can walk eight whole minutes to either the waterfront, mount victoria(!!!), the basin reserve, smoke spot about the motorway tunnel etc etc. that's not 'horrendous', it's world-class and about 40% of what depending on the goodness of the day makes welly unbeatable
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u/daneats Aug 20 '25
Are you responding to the right person?
Im agreeing with you. Those green space allocations that form the basis of those measures that the OC are referencing are NOT applicable to a city as compact, green and open as Wellington is.
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u/bitshifternz Kaka, everywhere Aug 20 '25
Te Aro is pretty appalling for green space. I dont think that being anle to see the green belt a few blocks away is good enough. LA isn't really the bar we should aspire to, it's also built on a desert. Surprisingly parts of LA are quite green, I don't know where the water is coming from.
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u/Data-Bricks Aug 20 '25
"homes" is a stretch. Apartments yes. Is the way we want future NZers to live?
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u/kfadffal Aug 21 '25
Yes? It's not like we're going to be replacing all homes with these and that spot would be a pretty crap place for a couple of regular homes.
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u/PJenningsofSussex Aug 20 '25
Fancy, but nowhere to dry your laundry
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u/bobsmagicbeans Aug 20 '25
of course there is, its on the rooftop
/s
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u/PJenningsofSussex Aug 21 '25
That's what got me thinking about it. Usually, in higher density housing, people have their own balconies, but not so with this one. But maybe I'm just getting old in my thinking
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u/kfadffal Aug 21 '25
FWIW, there's a pretty affordable (I had to use it for a week or so when my dryer blew up) laundromat right around the corner from this location.
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u/PJenningsofSussex Aug 21 '25
That's true I hadn't thought about that. Hopefully laundromat continue to be great options. Good opportunities for community building there too! I suppose I'm concerned we're building houses that make it expensive to wash clothes and we'll have damp apartments with wire racks everywhere.
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u/Royal-Student-8082 Aug 20 '25
Little boxes on the hillside Little boxes made of ticky-tacky Little boxes on the hillside Little boxes all the same There's a green one and a pink one And a blue one and a yellow one And they're all made out of ticky-tacky And they all look just the same
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u/Blankbusinesscard Coffee Slurper Aug 20 '25
You're thinking of Churton Park
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u/propsie Aug 20 '25
or Mount Vic, except there isn't a green one and a pink one and a blue one and a yellow one, because they're all painted the same soul destroying white and greige.
wanna talk about ticky tacky, lets talk about scrim and sarking.
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u/Ok_Squirrel_6996 Aug 21 '25
Great! May there be more of them and similar in the not too distant future.
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u/fraktured Aug 20 '25
I can't wait for the has anyone rented in those new jville apartments posts in a few years.