A proposal to grant leases for a mobile trading site on the Museum Reserve has hit resistance from Otago Museum.
Food trucks and trailers have worked in the reserve for the past nine years under a permit arrangement, but a new Dunedin City Council mobile trading bylaw specifically identifies a permanent mobile trading site on the reserve and permission is required under the Reserves Act.
The council's environmental health team has a resource consent for use of the site and will be responsible for administering any leases for its use.
It proposes issuing five leases, one for each weekday.
It says examples of lessees could be Bacon Buttie Man, Tex Otago, Dunedin Cupcakes, La Crepe, Churros Ole, Coffee Pirate and Wurst on the Run.
A council hearings committee of chairman Cr Andrew Noone, Cr David Benson-Pope and Cr Lee Vandervis will hear the proposal on Tuesday.
It will decide whether to recommend to the Minister of Conservation that the leases be granted.
Fifteen submitters on the proposal, including the nearby University of Otago and food vendors that could operate from the site, support the proposal.
The Otago Museum Trust board, which also opposed use of the site when the council was reviewing its bylaw, opposed the idea.
It said the proposal was inconsistent with the council's own reserves management plan.
It was concerned about the lack of detail of potential lessees and that mobile traders were being unfairly advantaged compared with other businesses in the city.
It feared safety issues with jay-walkers crossing to buy lunch and queues creating obstacles on the reserve, and that the site would affect the museum's heritage values.
The other opponent, the council of the Association of the Friends of the Otago Museum, said the council should be supporting existing facilities on the reserve, including the museum's cafe and a coffee bar in the old North Dunedin post office, which the association recently spent $1.6 million upgrading.
Council reserves amd recreation planning team leader Richard Saunders responded that the council's reserves management plan provided for commercial use of reserves and any commercial impact could not be considered under the Reserves Act.
He said the site would provide convenience for reserve users, an argument also used by other submitters, and that was consistent with the purposes of the Reserves Act.
