Engineer, developer and heritage advocate Stephen MacKnight said "the wrong decision here" had the potential to "open the floodgates on many more similar demolitions" around the city.
Southern Heritage Trust chairwoman Jo Galer said proposals such as this posed the most significant threat to Dunedin’s old homes and structures in decades.
"For the love of Dunedin, we are literally fighting fires all over the city right now and it’s almost too much for our small voluntary group to handle."
Mr MacKnight’s comments were made in a submission on the application to knock down the 103-year-old Edmund Anscombe-designed house and a protected up to 100-year-old tree beside it in Stuart St.
A multistorey residential complex with about 30 apartments would then be built on the site by the applicant, Elim Group.
Mr MacKnight, who has successfully redeveloped multiple heritage buildings in the city, told the Otago Daily Times he was against the proposal and concerned it could set a precedent and lead to the destruction of heritage in the city.
This building was particularly prominent, being on a corner site, and along with the other buildings in the area, such as the King Edward Tech building, created an important heritage precinct, he said.
"This building should be the line in the sand that says we do care about heritage."
While he understood the need for more housing in the city centre, there needed to be a balanced approach.
"There are other places which would meet the need for further density."
He was also concerned several other buildings of a similar age and importance to 284 Stuart St were not on the city council’s heritage schedule and therefore at risk of being demolished or neglected.
Ms Galer contacted the ODT yesterday to highlight the trust’s concerns.
Built heritage sat alongside wildlife and scenery as Dunedin’s major tourist attractions and was a major reason people wanted to visit or live in the city, she said.
"But sadly, we are finding some local entrepreneurs with money and influence have a serious blind spot to our sense of aesthetics and pioneering history. We haven’t seen such a serious threat to our streetscapes since the 1980s. These people want to rip down our heritage assets and build cheap-looking, poorly designed apartment blocks and complexes that maximise their profits instead."
The council has so far received more than 50 submissions on the application for consent for the project, the majority against it, though one submitter did welcome the possibility of more housing in the city centre.
The city desperately needed more housing, Palin Wiseman said.
"We couldn’t let an old building or a tree that isn’t even native stand in the way of that."
Submissions on the proposal close today.
