Local Wellington man in stoush with council over old chimney he wants demolished

December 16, 2019

Tony DeLerenzo owns Emeny House, which is heritage listed.

A Wellington man who owns heritage-listed Emeny House wants to get rid of an old chimney in his back garden, but Wellington City Council won’t let him.

The council says it's part of the character of the villa but Tony DeLorenzo told Seven Sharp it's old and dangerous and needs to go.

Despite buying a house with such a high heritage listing, he says he didn’t expect to run into trouble with the council.

“In the beginning the council were wonderful they let us do a lot of things because they acknowledged that it’s a house to be lived in, but lately they’ve become a bit more bureaucratic," says Mr DeLorenzo.

"They’re really sticking to the rules and the chimney is a perfect example of that."

He wants the City Council to support their application for the resource consent to remove the chimney, he also wants clearer answers from them. 

"At the moment they’re being a bit ambivalent about it and saying that they would like to keep it but they’re not actually saying that officially," he said.

Without the council's support for resource consent, Mr De Lorenzo said he's looking at forfeiting a couple of thousand dollars worth of fees, including a $1600 application fee. 

"If they don’t support it and the application is declined then we forfeit that money and we also have to forfeit an engineer’s fee of about $1200 to determine that the chimney is falling down when it's actually quite obvious that it is," he said. 

If supported, he said the application would likely go through and it would take three or months or so, plus the application fee would be refunded. 

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