He knelt down in the boys' sandpit, and talked to them about the danger posed by floods and the importance of beginning work on a big flood control system across the Waikato. Just a couple of years earlier, Prime Minister Keith Holyoake had visited the family. His mother wasn't well pleased, he recalls, because of the danger. Malcolm Lumsden has a photo of himself in a homemade canoe, playing with his younger brothers Kerren and Ralph in the receding waters of the oft-remembered floods of February 1958. The Waikato's safety valve Malcolm Lumsden in a homemade canoe, playing with his younger brothers Kerren and Ralph. And neighbour Malcolm Lumsden said they were now negotiating to run a railway siding across his farmland. That's already a six-month delay on the project managers' ambitious timeline – and that's not the only ambitious part of the original "masterplan" for a 1500-job, 3000-person community, that is now being chopped and changed.Ĭraig Turner has confirmed they have dropped plans for an outlet mall in the Sleepyhead Estate, which was projected to have created 169 jobs. Its supporters hope it could get a green light by April. If it passes that hurdle, the Government has agreed that the first part of the $1.1 billion project – a foam factory – can be fast-tracked through the resource consent process. Diggers have already moved onto the north Waikato site where Sleepyhead plans to build a $1.2 billion factory and housing development. This is a tale of the generations – and of aging patriarchs whose decisions now will impact on those not yet born.Ī decision is expected in February from the Waikato district planning commissioners, on whether 176 hectares at Ohinewai, 5km north of Huntly, should be rezoned from farm land to a mix of industrial, commercial and residential.
How wise is it to urgently fast-track the resource consent process for the new Ohinewai foam factory, on the north Waikato flood plain abutting the protected Lake Rotokawau? Click here to comment.Īllan Sanson is another third generation farmer, now mayor of the Waikato District with bold dreams to expand the council's rating base with more industry, more houses, more people on the district's lush land on the banks of the Waikato River.
Decade after decade, he's seen floods sweep across these green plains – and he fears for what will happen if 1100 little houses made of ticky-tacky are built there. The 72-year-old lives next door to the proposed Sleepyhead Estate on Lumsden Rd, named after his grandfather. John and Jessie Lumsden bought up swampy flood plains across north Waikato and converted them to productive dairy farmland where their grandson Malcolm now farms. Now Craig and Graeme Turner own Sleepyhead, the biggest mattress-manufacturer in Australasia, and they believe they can create a whole Sleepyhead town where future employees will be born, grow up, work at their factory, buy homes and eventually die. SYDNEY TURNER set his grandsons Craig and Graeme to work on the factory floor, building mattresses. UPDATE: Construction of the $1.2 billion Sleepyhead Estate housing and manufacturing development at Ohinewai is to start in 2022 after opponents Waikato Regional Council and transport agency Waka Kotahi resolved their issues in December, pre-empting the need for an Environment Court hearing. Sleepyhead is chopping and changing its ambitious plan to build a super-factory and a community of 1100 medium density houses on a block of farmland in the north Waikato. Best of the Year Sleepyhead’s dream answer to the housing crisis
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