BAN ON “BACHELOR FLATS”

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 772, 19 September 1929, Page 1

BAN ON “BACHELOR FLATS”

.Challenge to City Council

PROMOTERS TO GO AHEAD

Mr. Bloodworth and Miss Basten

ON the issue of the so-called “bachelor flats” in the building called Marlborough Mansions, to be erected in Vincent Street, the City Council is likely to have a troublesome case on its hands. The promoters of the enterprise have determined to defy the council and are going ahead with their plans.

“We rely on the Town Planning Board, which has approved similar projects in Christchurch and Wellington, to endorse our action,” said a member of the company. “In any case, we already have the approval of the Director of Town Planning. “The City Council admits that it has no by-law under which the plan can be challenged. We will fight the case in the courts if necessary, and in the meantime the preparations will go on.” It will be six or eight weeks yet, according to the architect, Mr. S. S. Alleman, before plans and specifications will be so far advanced as to permit construction work to begin. In the meantime, of course, no general permit will be issued by the City Council. The matter has been* discussed lately at informal gatherings of city architects, some of whom take exception to the fact that the council shows no disposition to abide by its by-laws. The section of the Town-Planning Act under which the Marlborough Mansions plan is attacked provides that “the amenities” of a neighbourhood must be safeguarded. This clause is specifically intended to guard against erection of factories in residential areas. It is not considered that “the amenities” of Vincent Street will be endangered by such a structure as the promoters have in view. According to the plans, Marlborough Mansions is to be a handsome building of six floors. Furthermore the promoters had before approaching the council arranged to hand over a four-feet wide strip of their frontage to provide for the widening of the street. “PEOPLE IN FLATS . . Discussing the matter with a Sun representative; a member of the company recalled the, recent public utterances on the subject by Mr. T. Bloodworth and Miss Alice Basten, both City councillors. He made the allegation that, while both these councillors apparently condemned flats on general grounds, they lived in flats themselves. Mr. Bloodworth had endorsed a visiting clergyman’s statement that flats were just “respectable slums,” a curious argument, he considered, in view of the fact that in Auckland alone such prominent people as Sir Walter Stringer, Mr. Justice Blair. Mr. Eliot Davis, Mr. J. M. Hickson,

and Mr. H. T. Merritt, president of the Chamber of Commerce, to name only a few among many, lived in flats. He claimed that much of the criticism appeared to have been dictated by prejudice. Mr. Bloodworth had stated that the flats were to contain double beds. This was sheer misrepresentation, on which Mr. Bloodworth could easily have corrected himself. “The council challenges cur plan on the ground of possible danger to public morality. Yet the prospectus provides for the most rigid supervision, and the appointment of a manager and manageress. Does Mr Bloodworth imagine that a gentleman like the Hon. E. W. Alison, who is chairman of directors of the company, would be associated with a project whose propriety could be questioned?” FLATS AT “REXCOURT” With reference to the allegations made in this conversation. The Sun representative subsequently investigated the statement that Mr. Bloodworth and Miss Basten live in, or are interested in, flats. The result was the piquant discovery that Mr. Bloodworth’s home at 36 Scarborough Terrace, Parnell, is, divided into two flats, the upper one which is occupied by Mr. Bloodworth, who is the owner of the property. Miss Basten who, as chairman of the housing group of the Town Planning Association, presented a report on the proposed “bachelor flats" to a meeting of the Town Planning Association on Tuesday evening, shares with other members of her family a flat at “Rexcourt,” in Symonds Street. In her report on Tuesday evening. Miss Basten condemned the proposed flats as highly undesirable “from economic, hygienic, and social considerations.” At “Rexcourt,” a Symonds Street establishment, which is run In the name of Mrs. R. Basten, the top floor is devoted to six rooms which could perhaps legitimately be described as “bachelor flats,” although the facilities are much more modest than the self-contained hall, separate bathroom, kitchenette, dressing-room and living-room which Marlborough Mansions proposed to give. The male occupants of these six rooms share one bathroom between them, and two sets of cooking facilities which open through low doors off the passage into an unlined space under the gable of the sloping roof.