Plans for a large residential and visitor accommodation village at Mt Cardrona Station are progressing, with a resource consent application lodged to subdivide land at the site into bulk lots in preparation for future development.
Mount Cardrona Station is a 650ha farm on the western side of Cardrona Valley Rd, about 1.5km west of the Cardrona township. It contains all of the land subject to the Queenstown Lakes District Council's plan change 18, which allowed for the creation of the 131ha Mount Cardrona Station special zone.
Mount Cardrona Station Ltd has applied to subdivide land within the special zone to create nine bulk titles, comprising 13 new allotments and two existing allotments.
The company's resource consent application states the purpose of the proposed subdivision is to "set in place a land tenure structure that provides for future land management, subdivision staging, construction, bank financing and security to enable further residential and commercial subdivision and development to proceed as provided for within the special zone".
Mt Cardrona Station Ltd director Chris Morton, of Auckland, said while the resource consent application had been lodged with the QLDC, it was temporarily on hold until plan change 18 became operative. That is expected to happen on November 22, when the plan change goes before the QLDC for ratification.
The proposed subdividing of land was "just another preparatory step towards starting work on the site", Mr Morton said.
He could offer no indication of when work on the development might begin, as "the council decision to formally notify the plan change" was needed before anything else could be confirmed.
Mt Cardrona Station holds consents for a 844-unit residential and visitor accommodation development. A large portion - 93.1ha - of the land owned by the company will remain open space.
In September, the Environment Court upheld the council's 2009 decision to approve plan change 18, after another Cardrona developer, Brooklynne Holdings Ltd, appealed to the Environment Court, mainly over landscape principle concerns.
