As it stands, an Environment Court hearing on the primary appeal - lodged by Brecon St Partnership Ltd and Remarkables Jet Ltd - will be heard before a High Court appeal on a procedural decision issued in December by the lower court.
Four parties, all owners of various parcels of land next to or near the proposed Plan Change 50 area, lodged an appeal with the Environment Court, seeking, in part, to have their land included or the deletion of the town centre transition zone.
They were Well Smart Investment Holding (NZQN) Ltd, formerly the Reid Investment Trust; Queenstown Gold Ltd; Man Street Properties Ltd; Kelso Investments Ltd; and Cheng's Capital Investments Ltd.
In December, Judge Jon Jackson found those appeals were not within jurisdiction and since then Kelso/Cheng and Queenstown Gold have withdrawn from proceedings.
Graham Todd, acting on behalf of the remaining two parties, appealed that to the High Court - and applied to the Environment Court to postpone the primary hearing on Plan Change 50 until the higher matter had been dealt with.
In his decision on that application, issued last month, Judge Jackson declined to adjourn the hearing.
"I accept that none of this is ideal, but this situation has come about first as a consequence of the council's refusal to identify the extension land as possible alternative extensions to the zone and secondly as a result of High Court decisions, which are binding on this court.''
At issue seems to be the council's initial section 32 evaluation report, under the Resource Management Act, completed before the plan change was publicly notified in September 2014.
The evaluation, carried out by Mitchell Partnership, appeared to be confined to the Plan Change 50 area and didn't directly address the use of other land for achieving the objectives of the district plan.
Previous High Court decisions on similar cases found if a local authority's section 32 evaluation was "[potentially] inadequate'', that might cut out the range of submissions that might be found to be "on'' the plan change.
"It seems potentially unfair that the right of submitters to be heard about different resources should be strictly circumscribed by the proponent of the plan change if those resources possibly should be one of the other reasonably practicable options which should have been considered under [the] section 32 [evaluation].
"That concern is strengthened where [as here] the council has a financial interest in the outcome.''
