Earlier this year, a complaint from a member of the public alerted the Queenstown Lakes District Council to a private tennis court and garage partially built on recreation reserve land at Don and Joan Kindley's property on Wicklow Tce, overlooking the Clutha River. The land was vested in the council by the Department of Conservation (Doc) last year.
The Kindleys have owned the property since 1989, replacing their former crib on the site with their present house and tennis court in 2002.
Mr Kindley showed the Otago Daily Times plans lodged with the council at the time clearly showing the tennis court contained within the boundary.
Despite the plans being approved, it later became evident, after the tennis court and garage were built, that the boundary had been breached.
Over the years, the Kindleys also landscaped some of the neighbouring reserve, building a vegetable garden and planting "hundreds of dollars worth" of fruit and oak trees.
"[The reserve] was real tiger country and I looked after it all.
I water it, I mow the lawns and I've been spraying for broom within a 200m radius," Mr Kindley said.
While he did not dispute the encroachment, "it certainly hasn't been done deliberately or to be smart, more to try and make the place look decent and maintain it".
Dan Egerton, of council property management company APL, said the council could ask the Kindleys to vacate all the reserve land, but that would be "impractical", given the permanent nature of the encroaching structures.
In a report to the Wanaka Community Board, he has recommended revoking the recreation reserve status of a 211sq m strip of land - valued at $30,000 - containing part of the tennis court and garage, and giving the land back to Doc to sell to the Kindleys.
The council would have to publicly notify the intention to revoke the reserve status and call for submissions.
Mr Kindley's plantings would remain as part of the reserve.
While the council dealt with reserve encroachments on a "fairly regular basis", the option of selling the land concerned to the owner "doesn't happen very often at all", and each case needed to be carefully weighed up to determine whether there was a greater benefit to the community in losing the land, Mr Egerton said.
"Realistically, the public isn't losing that much land and are gaining quite a lot ... for future generations, there's effective-ly an orchard, so there's something that's a natural benefit," Mr Egerton said.
Other cases of encroachment on council land, where the land was subsequently bought by private property owners, usually had an encroachment penalty of 50% of the sale price of the land added, to act as a deterrent to other people who might encroach.
However, the Kindleys case was "unique . . . whilst the land is vested and managed by the QLDC, if the land sells, it doesn't get the money, it goes back to Doc. What we're trying to do is work out a way that instead of paying an encroachment fee, he [Mr Kindley] will undertake works in lieu of that."
One suggestion was requiring the Kindleys to pay for fencing to better define property boundaries.
Mr Kindley had no problem walking away from the garden he developed and was happy to install fencing and buy the strip of reserve land - although it was "a shame that perhaps the council won't get the benefit of [the sale]", he said.
"I just want to get it it sorted."
