Wintergardens
RMA Consent Strategy & Procurement
Wintergardens was a regional retail and commercial centre planned on 32 hectares of land to the north of Queenstown Airport by Australian investor Terrace Tower — a private company owned by John Saunders AO who was co-founder of the hugely successful Westfield Group.
The Wintergardens project was very personal for John Saunders. He loved Queenstown and owned a holiday home there because the mountains reminded him of his birth country Hungary. He visited regularly from his business base in Sydney Australia. Being a founder of one of the world’s largest retail shopping centre owners, he always bemoaned the limited range of retail goods for Queenstown locals and the very high prices prevalent in the region. He decided to do something about this by introducing competition in the form of a new retail and commercial centre focused on the needs of locals. Predictably local retailers worried about the impact that fresh competition might have on their profits vigorously opposed the proposal — along with many other commercial interests. Disappointingly, the Queenstown Lakes District Council also opposed the proposal and instead promoted development on land which it owned at Queenstown Airport — as well as privately owned land to the south.
I was retained as lead consultant for the land acquisition, project concept development, design development and RMA consent strategy and procurement phases. The project started as a privately initiated plan change under the Resource Management Act before being superseded by the territorial authority district plan review process. The role involved managing the technical team comprising architect, landscape architect, civil engineers, planners, soil scientists, aviation experts, acoustic and traffic engineers, lawyers and economist. It also involved conceiving and implementing a substantial communications strategy and programme which resulted in unprecedented ‘grass roots’ community backing (1,600 written submissions of support during the hearings process — a record at the time). Notwithstanding RMA hurdles, very aggressive tactics by commercial competitors and QLDC opposition — approval was eventually gained at the Environment Court after a five-year battle.
Responsibilities
- Site acquisition.
- Coordinating master site planning.
- Briefing the technical team.
- Presentations to potential retail anchors.
- Implementing the communications strategy.
- Conducting public presentations & workshops.
- Making submissions/presentations to QLDC.
- Giving evidence to QLDC & Environment Court.
Client
Terrace Tower (Pty) Ltd
Footnote
After such a prolonged and expensive planning battle, Terrace Tower described the planning success as “pyrrhic”. Following the death of John Saunders, a decision was made by the company to on-sell the land to public unlisted South Island developer Property Ventures. The proposed form of development was re-positioned and re-branded as ‘Five Mile’ — a high density residential and mixed-use concept. Following the collapse of Property Ventures, in the wake of the GFC, the land was again on-sold and development has progressively evolved into the Queenstown Central Shopping Centre and other commercial activities clustered around Grant Road.
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