Is Huntly the next Parnell? Maybe

Published on Stuff.co.nz and in the Waikato Times.

Everywhere has one - the town people are embarrassed by.

One of New Zealand's is Huntly; with its looming coal-fired power station towers, the tired string of state houses, the railway line just to the side of the highway.

"It's a small, ugly, industrial hole with literally nothing to do," said Abigail Simpson on her blog, Poms Away, an expat's view of New Zealand. The post is titled "Huntly. Yes, It's That Bad" and most who don't live in the town would agree. But if it plays its cards right, it could be the next Parnell, the next Ponsonby, the next Cambridge.

It wasn't so long ago that Parnell was the oldest and the least desirable Auckland suburb, a collection of mean little houses that could describe Huntly today. Now Parnell's median house price is $1.12 million. According to the head of architecture and planning at the University of Auckland, Elizabeth Aitken-Rose, it could take Huntly 50 years to really develop, but it is possible. "Essentially, urban change occurs over time when people cannot afford to buy in the most sought after areas, so they look at areas they can afford to live in and once you start getting a critical mass, then those places change."

Those moving to cheaper areas can afford to do up their houses and put pressure on councils and governments to provide public amenities and a better environment.

"A lot of Hamilton people choose to live in Cambridge and commute into Hamilton because Cambridge has a lot of charm.

"At this particular point in time, Huntly doesn't have that level of charm. It doesn't have the beautiful parks and tree-lined streets. But it has the ingredients of it. "You'll find if people move there and start doing the houses up and insisting there are good schools and libraries, then Huntly could become a very nice place to live."

His words are as true today as they were 35 years ago. And now the highway is seeing another shift, one that will remove it from behind the town to through the adjacent hills. It's a move that prompts mixed reactions. Businesses that rely on passing truckies and tourists will see profits fall and people may stop choosing to visit Huntly at all. The Waikato District Council plans to move the iSite when the bypass is completed in 2020, for that reason. "Huntly has a bypass that sees the back of the town," confirms Waikato District Mayor Allan Sanson. "It gives the perception there's not much there. "And because they don't get off the road, they don't see the real Huntly. You're not seeing the lakes, you're not seeing the clubs and organisations, you're not meeting the people." His plan is to open up the land surrounding the current bypass to developers looking for industrial sites. "We can put whatever we want there and a lot of developers have identified that. It makes it easier for them to deal with council and not NZTA [NZ Transport Agency]. "They're keen to develop an industrial park because it can connect quite easily to the expressway and that's driving those opportunities."

That means jobs, and potentially the beginning of the transformation Aitken-Rose sees. The old coal town is seeing the mines close just as coal-fired power becomes less desirable. That means the towers could eventually come down.

"The first big change came when [Solid Energy] went from State Coal to Coalcorp - 800 miners got laid off in one shot. That was a transition from the old ways to the new ways," Sanson says.

The old ways, where everyone had a father, brother or son in the mines, no longer exist. Jobs have been disappearing from the mines over the last five years, and the latest axing of 65 people isn't expected to hurt the town much.

"The biggest percentage don't live in Huntly, so the actual impact on the town is probably minimal. A lot of those people who lost jobs have [transferable] skills. "You can't call yourself a mining town if you don't mine anymore. Mining is our history, but we've diversified out. A lot of light industry no longer wants to be in Auckland. The plastics factory down here in Huntly turned up out of the blue - relocated." But Sanson is not only focused on helping developers plant their roots in Huntly. In a meeting with Auckland Mayor Len Brown, NZTA and other stakeholders, the issue of traffic from the Waikato into Auckland was discussed. While commuters can drive from Hamilton to Auckland quickly, the increase has caused serious congestion issues for the wannabe super city. "Auckland doesn't start at the Drury interchange, that's where the traffic stops. So when you complete the expressway it will allow far more people to travel quicker, so it could push that trail of traffic back to the Bombays."

Studies were done two years ago on the expected growth and what it would mean for the regions, but no one predicted the sheer pace that city slickers would abandon the skyscrapers for the green pastures of the Waikato.

So one solution is to put in a commuter rail service, to try to decrease traffic congestion. Sanson is hoping for a train that can travel 120kmh.

"It's not going to happen overnight, but it is something we're prepared to start looking at seriously. We hope to have some reports out by halfway next year.

"And what's good for Auckland, believe it or not, is good for the Waikato." He's right about that, indirectly. Those skyrocketing house prices in Auckland are paying off for Huntly. Real Estate Institute of New Zealand (REINZ) figures show Huntly prices were static until about a year ago - October 2014 saw 12 residential dwelling sales. In May 2015, 35 houses changed hands. "That's quite significant in a small town like Huntly," said Harcourts managing director, Dallas Hodge. She moved down from Auckland in 1996 for a better life. "Our daughter was one. She had been going into the creche and I was pretty much working to pay the creche fees. It wasn't the life we wanted, so we bought a house on Riverview Road for $80,000. "It completely changed our lifestyle." At the time, her family all asked why she was moving to the slum of the Waikato, but since she did, her parents, her auntie and uncle and her brother have all moved down. Now her in-laws are selling their house in Auckland and looking to buy in Huntly.

And according to her data, she's not the only one.

This year so far, across three Harcourts offices in Ngaruawahia, Huntly and Te Kauwhata, 54.7 per cent of buyers in the towns were from Auckland, compared with 38 per cent in 2014.

"Why are people paying these astronomical prices in Auckland when there are towns not too far away? Huntly being roughly an hour from central Auckland, you can buy reasonable, affordable housing."

The median house price last year was $121,000. Based on sales so far in 2015, the median has reached $199,950.

Although she once thought of Huntly as a "gang-town", she has since discovered the lakes, become part of the community and is running a successful real estate business on the main street.

"The impression that most people had was you just drove through it. It wasn't a place to stop. We didn't really know there were lakes here."

And that could be the trend. Expressways have been the end of small towns according to Aitken-Rose, as people speed by and forget they exist.

"Basically Huntly is a coal mining town, and coal has gone out of fashion.

"I don't think it was a town that ever developed beyond a working-class town."

But there is light at the end of the tunnel, and not from where one might expect.

"Often the vanguard of change is artists. They'll move into areas where there's low rent, because they don't have much money, but they're full of dynamism and interesting bohemian ways of life.

"They develop their own culture, then that becomes very attractive to other people and basically the middle class starts moving in.

"The moment for Huntly will be when it becomes an interesting place for people to live in.

"It sits on the beautiful Waikato river, it's relatively close to Hamilton, it's on the number one highway, has a housing stock that can be developed, so it has quite a lot of potential."

And it's that potential the community and council need to harness and exploit in this time of change, in order to fulfil our retired businessman's prophecy.

Huntly could be the best town in New Zealand, maybe.

It's not the first time Huntly's had a chance at finishing school. When the through traffic was redirected from the main street to the bypass behind in the 1970s, businesses rejoiced. "[The town has] a new sense of purpose, and opened the way for future development, that could make Huntly one of the best towns in NZ," a retired businessman said at the time.

But the rejoicing was over less than 10 years later. A study by Tom Fookes in 1979 on the social and economic impact of the Huntly Power Station concluded the opposite had occurred.

"People also tend to see Huntly enroute to points North or South; either from the highway or railway," wrote Fookes. "Neither routes give a flattering impression with advertising hoardings, vacant, overgrown land and quarry sites. ... improvements carried out, or planned, will change this in time."

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