Bid fails to move festival to resort’s CBD

Despite high-level support from Queenstown’s tourism and business organisations, and skifield partner NZSki, Snow Machine’s owner has failed in his bid to host his music festival in the CBD-adjacent Recreation Ground.

Quentin Nolan will instead run the event for the third year running at Frankton’s Remarkables Park this September.

Mr Nolan has persistently pitched for the Rec Ground claiming it would benefit CBD businesses - and also his own bottom line, as last year he spent about $120,000-$130,000 transporting festival attendees to and from Frankton.

He said the Queenstown Lakes District Council’s reasons were the Rec Ground’s potential for flooding and the potential for noise complaints.

The flooding reason "doesn’t make any sense because they put the marathon in there that has more people ... any site can flood, and there’s contingencies we can put in, like, to mitigate it or to move it to a different venue".

Mr Nolan said the council’s stance was "a bit frustrating because, like, town’s lost so many events, and there’s just this unwillingness to make a perfectly good site available".

"The CBD just doesn’t get the same benefit it would if the event was in town.

"There’s also transportation issues, like Frankton Rd’s been a nightmare over the last month, and it’s only going to get worse, and then you add to that pressure 100 buses on it, and that’s not really a good result for the community, either."

Mr Nolan said he would also be happy with central Queenstown’s Warren Park, but council would not entertain that either, as it would be too close to Te Pa Tahuna residents.

"We could have got letters signed by the residents saying they were happy with it, if I came up with some compensation, like tickets or whatever. [Council have] just kind of put a line through that site."

In an unprecedented move, Destination Queenstown and the Queenstown Business Chamber of Commerce lobbied the council for the event to be held at the Rec Ground or Warren Park.

In a supporting letter, the chief executives of both groups argued those sites provided downtown businesses "the greatest opportunity to leverage the visitation the event drives over this quieter period".

"To be honest, Remarkables Park as a site itself works quite well, and the guys out there have been very supportive of the event," Mr Nolan said.

However, despite already having sold about half of his targeted 8000 tickets, he believed the site was a slight deterrent for some.

"I mean, when people think they’re going to be catching a bus every day up and down to the snowfield, then they come back and then they’ve got to get on another bus out to the [Frankton] site, then they get on a bus to come back to their accommodation, I feel like that definitely adds up."