However, comments made by the decision-ruling commissioners indicate that future developers of retirement villages in Wanaka could be welcomed with open arms.
Developers pushing for the Stoney Creek Retirement Village - an 85-unit apartment complex in suburban Meadowstone - courted controversy with their resource consent application and raised the ire of their neighbours.
A resource consent decision has been withheld by Lakes Environmental for the past seven months, as the Queenstown Lakes District Council controlled organisation waited for the Stoney Creek developers to pay outstanding consent processing invoices.
Two Auckland-based directors Allen Patrick Peters and Steven Shane Thomas are responsible for the Stoney Creek Village Ltd (SCVL) company, after former company directors Tony Hannon and Chris Holmes walked away from the project in April.
SCVL planner Mark Brown, of Christchurch, could not be contacted yesterday to confirm whether the developers intend to appeal the resource consent decision to the Environment Court.
SCVL wants to build a 10-building complex on a 1.83ha site at the corner of Mount Aspiring Rd and Meadowstone Dr.
Independent commissioners John Matthews, a Queenstown barrister, and David Whitney, an Alexandra planning consultant, cited flooding concerns and significant adverse effects from the proposed development's "bulk and density", as reasons to refuse resource consent.
The flood-prone waterway of Stoney Creek, which runs through the middle of the proposed retirement village site, was deemed to be too much of a hazard by the commissioners.
"The fact that true scale of the hazard associated with Stoney Creek is not known ... considers that a precautionary approach should be taken with respect to the potential effects of flooding which have a high potential impact," Mr Matthews said.
Concerns about the effects of residential car parking and access to the retirement village were also highlighted by the commissioners.
Mr Matthews took aim at several opponents of the proposed retirement village who have campaigned against the project.
Neighbours of the Meadowstone site formed a protest group Sensible Development 4 Wanaka, claiming the proposal was "little more" than an apartment complex marketed to the rich and old.
The commissioner criticised the group's approach and calls by some of its members for retirement villages to be located on the outer boundaries of town.
"Some submitters suggested to us that retirement complexes should not be located in or adjacent to residential zones ...
"If the principle behind that assertion is that elderly people should be housed away from the balance to the community, as the context of the statement implied, we emphatically reject it," Mr Matthews said.
There was a "positive effect" in providing a retirement village in Wanaka and the commissioners were satisfied demand for such facilities exist "... here we record our firm view that had all other matters been equal, the location of this site is an entirely appropriate one for a retirement village".
"The potential positive effects of a development of a retirement village in this location are significant,".
The commissioners speculated about the proposal if the developers had applied with a proposal which reduced in the size and density of the complex and also appropriately mitigated the flooding hazard risks of Stoney Creek "to an acceptable level".
"We have considered whether ... we should refer this application back to the applicant with a view to inviting it either to proceed with the present proposal or to significantly amend it, to take account of the adverse effects we have identified.
"In the end we have decided that is appropriate to determine the application as it stands," Mr Matthew said.
