Restricted opening hours set by a Dunedin City Council resource consent committee for a planned McDonald's restaurant in Mosgiel have led the company to review the development.
A McDonald's spokeswoman said yesterday the company was committed to opening an outlet in Mosgiel, but the restricted hours meant "extra due diligence about the viability of the whole thing" was being done on the Hartstonge Ave site.
"Fundamentally, the reduced trading hours would have a big impact on business."
Rumours about the future of the development have been doing the rounds since a council consent committee released its decision just before Christmas last year.
Residents of neighbouring properties last year told the hearings committee of Crs Colin Weatherall (chairman), Andrew Noone, Paul Hudson and Mosgiel Taieri Community Board member Bill Feather they opposed the plan, because of the effects of noise, traffic, glare and lighting.
The restaurant site, a long, narrow section in Hartstonge Ave, lies between the New World supermarket and a complex of 17 privately owned houses and flats which have been built within the past three years.
McDonald's does not own the land.
Lloyd Morshuis, of Econ Ltd, is still listed as the ratepayer.
The consent decision restricted hours to 6am to 10pm, apart from Fridays and Saturdays, when closing time would be 11pm.
Neither residents nor McDonald's appealed the decision, and rumours recently suggested the company was looking for another site.
The spokeswoman said she was not aware of the rumours.
Asked whether the development was still going ahead, she said the company was going through the resource consent decision, and the "quite substantial" cut-back on trading hours.
The company had not appealed the decision because appeals were costly for everybody, she said.
"We have to weigh up the cost benefit of everything we do."
The company was communicating with Mr Morshuis, although not recently, and staff were "working on the design in background".
"We definitely do want to be in Mosgiel."
If the development was in, for instance, Greenlane in Auckland, with 50,000 cars passing a day, the situation might be different, she said.
