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Trouble in Paradiso Sue Wards
Something from nothing
Members of Wanaka’s Kea Scouts performed their version of Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book on Tuesday afternoon at the Scout Den. The children, aged between 6 and 8years-old, have been practising the play for the past few weeks, and entertained family and friends with their musical adaptation. The Keas are pictured getting into their characters before the performance.
A Wanaka business owner is frustrated with the latest obstacle in his attempt to find new premises for his longstanding business. Queenstown Lakes District Council commissioner David Whitney has ruled a resource application to relocate Cinema Paradiso to the former Catholic church on Brownston Street should be publicly notified. Cinema Paradiso owner Callum McLeod (pictured) has been trying for five years to find a suitable new location for his business and has spent more than $100,000 on the resource consent process so far, including expenditure on his first application for a site near the junction of Highways 6 and 84. “You do sit back and go, why is it so hard?” Callum said. The commissioner’s decision for the process to be publicly notified will add at least another three months to the process and will cost many more dollars, Callum said. If he had been told at the beginning of the process it was “a no go” he would not have gone ahead, he said. “But we’ve done everything – got the traffic report,
noise report, the neighbours’ consent.” Lakes Environmental had supported both applications to proceed on a nonnotified basis. Wanaka businesses are currently struggling, Callum said, “And here we’ve got Varina, an out-of-town developer who’s wanting to spend money in town, being stalled.” Callum said he still has the drive to complete the process, but said, “We need the support of the town to make this happen.” QLDC deputy mayor and Wanaka Community Board chair Lyal Cocks said the Wanaka Community Board does not formally support applications and would not submit for or against the cinema application. However, Lyal said he personally supports the application going through a public process because the proposal is in a residential area. “It’s more than just the neighbours’ signoff – it’s an issue of town planning,” he said. A town centre strategy process was completed recently, confirming Brownston Street as the boundary to the town centre, and it was important to stick to the “integrity” of the plan, Lyal said. While he acknowledged the site was close to the boundary, he said,
“Why have a town plan if you’re just going to ignore it?” Lyal said the developer, Varina Property Ltd, “wants to put commercial operations
all along Brownstown Street”, but Varina Property Ltd director Duffy Krook, who owns the church along with a number of other properties on Brownston Street, said that is not the case. He has one other application pending regarding an existing commercial property on Brownston Street. Duffy, who has had business interests in Wanaka for five years, said the cinema application process has been “very difficult” and he
has almost got to the point of “putting Wanaka into the too-hard basket”. The commissioner’s decision said the cinema application is likely to have adverse effects on the environment “that are more than minor”, in particular the effects associated with “peripheral expansion rather than intensification of activity in the Wanaka town centre; effects in terms of blurring the clear definition of the edge of the town centre at Brownston Street; effects in terms of pedestrian movement across Brownston Street; and effects in terms of the integrity of the District Plan.” Lake Wanaka Tourism general manager James Helmore said Cinema Paradiso is “definitely one of the must-dos when you come to Wanaka” and having it continue “in some shape or form” will be beneficial to the town. James said compliance costs associated with resource consents have risen in recent years. “Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing depends on which side of the fence you’re sitting on,” he said.