The new commercial and residential zones for The Palms shopping centre in Shirley, Christchurch

The Palms shopping centre has bought dozens of neighbouring homes and won a zoning change which will allow it to expand.

Since the 1990s shopping centre owner, Australian-owned AMP Capital, has bought up 57 residential properties next to its existing site in Shirley.

On December 18 an independent panel hearing submissions on the city's district plan approved zone changes allowing The Palms to expand its retail and carparking to the immediate north of the centre, and on the western side of Marshland Rd.

DAVID HALLETT The Palms shopping mall has bought dozens of surrounding properties and hopes to expand.

A spokeswoman for AMP Capital said the outcome was "positive for The Palms".

The firm told city planners the zone change would allow "sensible, in-scale and well planned future retail expansion".

The property investor has had resource consent to expand within its existing footprint since 2010, but told city planners it was unlikely to use this right, which expires in 2020.

Tim Fulton Christchurch City Council flats beside The Palms in Shirley are surrounded by land now zoned for commercial development.

Instead, it asked for and was given approval for a re-zoning of some neighbouring properties from residential to commercial.

The city council will shortly formally notify the zone changes and interested parties have the right to appeal.

North Parade resident Philip Haythornthwaite, an epileptic whose wife is wheelchair-bound, said expansion "in any direction" would more make it harder for people with disabilities to access a local medical centre and pharmacy.

He said residents in the area had not been consulted and he had written to Mayor Lianne Dalziel asking for a public hearing on the re-zoning.

Shirley resident Viv Mander, who lives north of the new commercial and residential zones, said the shopping centre did not need to grow. "I think Christchurch is pretty over-shopped as it is. I'd like to see some good quality shops and good service rather than just more and more [stores]."

In April 2015, retail consultant Tony Dimasi, representing The Palms, told a city plan hearing the centre was not as large as some of its competetitors. Its 39,331 m sq compared to Westfield Riccarton at 54,000m2 and Kiwi Property's Northlands centre at 41,000m2.

"Although attractive and inviting . . . it suffers from a small retail offering.

"As a consequence of not providing a comprehensive retail offering, there would undoubtedly be leakage of retail spending to other retail centres in Christchurch." Prospective tenants wanted more leasable retail space in the centre, he said.

Architect Christopher Meikle said reconfiguring the centre under is existing 2010 consent would present many challenges to the developer. AMP Capital had a right to add 348 more car parks, by extending the multi-deck car park.

Putting all car-parks in a separate multi-deck building would cut off the parks from the shopping centre. The supermarket operator and other retailers providing trolleys would be particularly disadvantaged, Meikle said.

A new multi-deck car park on top of the existing retail building would mean they had to do costly seismic strengthening over more than 10,000m2 of retail area and tenants would also be disrupted during the strengthening process.

The council has also re-zoned other property around The Palms owned by AMP. That land can now be turned over into higher density, two to three-storey homes.

A council spokeswoman said that residential zone was a response to the Land Use Recovery Plan, which favoured people living more closely together around the city's largest retail centres.

A block of 27 council flats, the Shirley library and service centre, and a Resene paint store separate The Palms from some of AMP Capital's residential properties.

A tenant in an AMP Capital property just north of the shopping centre, Kathleen Hough, said AMP Capital started asking after the land soon after she moved there 23 years ago. The council said its most recent talks with The Palms over the flats were in 2008 and it was for AMP to comment on any developments.

A spokewoman for The Palms said the future of the flats was "very much a council issue" given it did not own the land or buildings.