Local real estate agent Richard Newman and veteran Queenstown developer John Guthrie proposed the 12-section development, on a 6.5ha property in McDonnell Rd, nearly four years ago.
Queenstown Lakes District Council commissioners refused to grant it consent in 2019 following a public hearing.
The development’s two backers then appealed to the Environment Court, which upheld the council’s decision last June on the grounds the proposal would have adverse effects on ‘‘landscape, character and visual amenity’’, and was contrary to the operative and the proposed district plans (PDP).
In his decision released this week, High Court judge Gerald Nation said the proposal site lay within one of 24 ‘landscape character units’, Arrowtown South, described in the PDP.
Arrowtown South was described as having a ‘‘high capability’’ of absorbing additional development.
Justice Nation said the appellants argued the Environment Court had not considered that description, nor given reasons why it was considered irrelevant in its assessment of the proposal.
However, Justice Nation said he was satisfied the court had properly considered the absorptive capability of the particular landscape affected by the proposal, and concluded it was limited.
Although the area contained a retirement village and other rural residential developments, it had a pastoral character and openness ‘‘in stark contrast to urban Arrowtown on the other side of McDonnell Rd’’.
Neither the Resource Management Act nor the PDP required the Environment Court to regard the reference to high absorption capability as an ‘‘overriding consideration’’, instead it has correctly placed greater weight on other planning provisions in the PDP relating to landscape character and visual amenity, he said.
Justice Nation also rejected the appellants’ arguments the court had failed to properly take account of the area’s zoning in the PDP, and reached conclusions about the landscape’s character not reasonably available on the evidence.
The court’s assessment of the landscape’s ‘‘predominantly rural’’ character’’ had drawn on the evidence of three landscape experts, photographs, and the judge and commissioners’ own site visits, he said.
Mr Newman could not be reached for comment.
