An appeal to the Environment Court regarding a controversial building platform for Roys Peninsula has been adjourned until August 18 because the court could not hold the fixture yesterday.
Registrar Chris Jordan said yesterday witnesses for some of the parties had clashing Environment Court commitments because they were appearing in other cases.
Two weeks have been set aside in August for a hearing in Wanaka before Judge Fred McElrea, of Auckland.
The appeal by the Matukituki Trust, associated with Auckland property businessman Greg Marler, was to have begun in Wanaka yesterday.
The case is believed to be one of the longest-running and most expensive resource consent applications for a single dwelling in the Queenstown Lakes district. Merely obtaining the right to develop the land is expected to reach a million-dollar figure.
The Environment Court in 2005 upheld a decision by the Queentown Lakes District Council to, among other things, reject the trust's house site on a prominent northwest knob on the peninsula.
Submitters Just One Life Ltd and the Upper Clutha Environmental Society identified an acceptable alternative house site tucked much lower into the landscape.
However the trust did not take up that suggestion and appealed to the High Court, which ruled in 2006 the Environment Court must reconsider the matter.
The trust has since suggested its own alternative site, which the council does not oppose.
However, the Upper Clutha Environmental Society does oppose it and wants the trust to renotify the consent application.
UCES president Julian Haworth said the trust's proposed alternative was only slightly lower than the original site and still on top of the knob.
He was "steaming'' that no planning and landscape reports had been produced on the alternative site by Lakes Environmental staff.
The trust's alternative site was a "bodgy backroom deal'' reached between the council and the trust that had avoided the normal planning process and public scrutiny, Mr Haworth said.
The High Court had ordered a rehearing on the original application, not the trust's alternative, he said.
