A $70 million student housing development on Colombo St in central Christchurch should be straightforward. The site has been derelict since the 2011 earthquakes. The developer, M Group Properties, has 16 off-plan buyers committed, contractors lined up, and a High Court injunction ordering neighbours to clear a right-of-way easement that has been registered since 1959. And yet the site sits empty, the neighbours are defying the court order, and the project is bleeding time and money.
That dispute is colourful enough on its own. But behind it sits a far bigger structural problem: Christchurch International Airport Ltd (CIAL) is systematically using noise contour planning rules to veto housing development across large parts of greater Christchurch, while the council that owns the airport publicly pleads for more homes.
A Mercedes, a court order, and a derelict site
The neighbour obstruction is almost comically brazen. Frame and Mirror director Graeme Patching and Triton Dairy owner Hitesh Ravji have parked vehicles and placed storage containers on an access way that M Group has a legal right to use. In December 2024, Patching allegedly sent threatening texts including “Stay the f* off our property’s you have no easement rights”. He then parked his Mercedes on the land to physically block access.
Justice Lisa Preston found the developers had established grounds for injunctive relief. Despite the court order, M Group told NZME that neighbours’ items remained on site. Sixteen buyers, a team of tradespeople, and a city short of student housing are all waiting on two people who apparently believe property rights only apply to them.
The airport’s quiet housing veto
The Colombo St project faces its own obstacles, but across greater Christchurch, CIAL wields a planning tool that dwarfs any neighbour dispute. Development within the 50-decibel outer noise contour is heavily restricted to prevent future residents from complaining about aircraft noise. The effect is to hand a profitable airport company a de facto veto over where Christchurch can build.
A 220-home section of a Rolleston subdivision has already been recommended for decline by a hearing commissioner because it falls within the contour. A 130-home West Melton subdivision by Hughes Development faces shelving after CIAL submitted against the rezoning, arguing it would be “inappropriate to alter the proposed rural zoning” when noise contours might shift. The application attracted 73 submissions. That is 350 potential homes frozen by a boundary that the airport itself is still reviewing.
The council owns both sides of this argument
Here is where the structural absurdity becomes impossible to ignore. CIAL is a council-controlled organisation owned through Christchurch City Holdings Ltd. The same council that owns the airport blocking housing is the council saying it needs more housing.
Christchurch Mayor Phil Mauger has been clear. When still a councillor, he said the city was “desperately short of land” and the contour land was “not beautiful marshland or farmland. It is solid land that could be divided for housing.” Selwyn Mayor Sam Broughton has backed him: “Phil, Dan and I all want to see the protection of 24-hour operation at the airport … but we don’t think that should restrict housing activity underneath the airport contours.”
Meanwhile, CIAL posted operating revenue of $120.6 million in the first half of FY2025 and paid $18.7 million in dividends to its shareholders. This is not a struggling utility protecting essential operations. It is a profitable government monopoly extracting planning power that constrains private development.
Tarras was the tell
While blocking housing around its existing footprint, CIAL spent years pursuing a speculative greenfield airport at Tarras in Central Otago, buying 750 hectares of farmland in July 2020. That project is now on hold due to capital constraints. Professor Ilan Noy of Victoria University told the council bluntly: “If Tarras fails, which I think is by far the most likely outcome, the citizens of Christchurch will lose a lot of money.”
A company that had the appetite for a speculative airport 300km away but opposes proven housing demand on its doorstep has its priorities exactly backwards.
This is going national
Wellington Airport is pursuing similar powers. Its proposed obstacle limitation surface changes would lower height thresholds to eight metres, capturing almost all townhouse developments, and extend the restricted zone 30 metres further outward into the city centre. Developers building medium-density housing would need airport sign-off on top of council consent.
Infrastructure New Zealand chief executive Nick Leggett has called for “absolute clarity for the development sectors”. Property Council chief executive Leonie Freeman warned that “frequent shifts risk undermining confidence” in growth strategy. The problem they are describing is exactly what Christchurch developers face: contour boundaries under review, outcomes uncertain, and every month of delay adding cost.
Protecting airport operations is legitimate. Using that protection as an expandable planning veto, wielded by a profitable government-owned company against the housing goals of its own shareholders, is something else entirely. The bill lands on developers, buyers, renters, and the employers who cannot attract workers to a city that will not let itself grow.
Sources
- NZ Herald: Court backs Colombo St developer, but battle continues as neighbours block site access (2025-09-01)
- Newstalk ZB: High Court backs Colombo St developer, but battle continues as neighbours block access to Christchurch site (2025-09-01)
- NZ Herald: Christchurch Airport noise plan could restrict West Melton housing expansion
- ODT/Star Christchurch: New bid to build houses near Christchurch Airport
- CIAL Interim Report for Six Months Ended 31 December 2024 (2025)
- RNZ: Plans for new Central Otago airport on hold
- RNZ: Christchurch residents will be losers if new Tarras airport goes ahead, council told
- The Spinoff: Wellington Airport wants veto power over your house (2025-06-11)
- NZ Herald: Property and infrastructure industry bosses want certainty over Auckland’s planning rules