Deal means rezoning in council hands

The Kirimoka Block. Photo by Marjorie Cook.
The Kirimoka Block. Photo by Marjorie Cook.
The rezoning of Wanaka's Kirimoko Block is back on the Queenstown Lakes District Council agenda after two neighbouring developers reached a private and amicable agreement with the landowners and decided to withdraw from an Environment Court appeal.

Coastal Land Trust Holdings and Allenby Farms had been seeking amendments to provide for a greater level of integration of roads, reserves and walkways between their land and the Kirimoko Block.

They had not appealed the entire decision granting the zone change.

Queenstown Lakes District Council senior policy analyst Alyson Hutton confirmed this week she would put the rezoning notification on the agenda for the Queenstown Lakes District Council meeting on June 27 for final council approval.

If the appeal had gone ahead, the 350-lot development would have been delayed until at least next year. It has taken several years to go through the town planning phase.

Kirimoko Block landowner and negotiator John May said he was delighted.

"A private agreement has been negotiated and reached to have further walkway links from the land to the east, which is Allenby Farms, to the Kirimoko Walkway, in the case that that land is developed," Mr May said.

All landowners had agreed they wanted to be connected to land owned by Coastal Trust and Allenby Farms and the result was "fantastic for Wanaka".

The agreement was not relevant to land Mr May owns in the block.

The Kirimoko landowners had not been so concerned about reserve connections during the rezoning hearing and would have been reasonable enough to grant the connections at a later stage. That had now been formally agreed, Mr May said.

The 58ha Kirimoko Block, which contains the popular mountainbiking destination of Sticky Forest, is zoned rural general.

Independent commissioners David Collins, Leigh Overton and Gillian McLeod recently decided it could be rezoned for a mixture of low and high density housing.

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