'Adverse' effect on landscape charged

Plans to subdivide more than 100ha at Crown Terrace, overlooking the Wakatipu Basin, will be tested at a resource consent hearing this week.

Royalburn Farming Company Ltd is seeking consent to subdivide the site at 464 Crown Range Rd into 20 lots, each with a building platform.

The site makes up part of Crown Terrace, a visual amenity landscape with strong cultural and heritage values.

Lakes Environmental Planning team leader Christian Martin has recommended consent be declined.

The application said the lots would range in size from 7775sq m to 1.0997ha, each with a 1000sq m building platform.

The 89ha balance lot would be retained in farming use.

"The subdivision has been designed to cluster development in areas where the topography limits visibility of future development from Crown Range Rd, to maintain the alluvial terraces as open pasture and to enhance the ecological values of the Swift Burn gullies," Lakes Environmental landscape architect Helen Mellsop said.

"Despite these positive aspects, the construction of access ways and up to 15 visible dwellings and amenity garden areas would result in over-domestication of the landscape and a loss of natural and pastoral character and rural amenity, as perceived from the Crown Range Rd."

The application relied on screen planting to mitigate the adverse visual effects of development on some lots.

But Ms Mellsop said she was doubtful that mitigation would be effective within the first seven years after establishment.

"Although the district plan encourages appropriate planting and landscaping as a means of mitigating loss of natural character in visual amenity landscapes, development may not be appropriate where mitigation is unlikely to be effective for many years."

Ms Mellsop's report said future development would be "prominent" when viewed from some nearby farms, including the adjoining Irwin farm, the Corbett property and the Desbecker and Bode dwelling.

"The proposed density of visible development and the disruption of historic vegetation patterns on site will result in significant adverse effects on the heritage values of the landscape."

Fourteen submissions were initially received on the application, but four were later withdrawn.

Of the 10 remaining submissions, five recommended consent be refused.

The hearing before independent commissioners Michael Parker and Gillian Macleod starts on Wednesday at the Crown Plaza, Queenstown, and is scheduled for two days.