The Queenstown Lakes Community Housing Trust and the Mana Tāhuna Charitable Trust recently discovered they have been separately pursuing their own plans for the land, which is accessed from Robertson St.
Speaking on the second day of Queenstown Lakes District Council annual plan hearings yesterday, Mana Tāhuna chief executive Michael Rewi said it had long wanted to build an ‘‘integrated social services hub’’ on the site.
The kaupapa Māori organisation’s staff were spread across three sites, and it was time to bring them under one roof, especially as the Wakatipu’s Māori and Pasifika communities continued to grow.
The building would allow it to better support the 1000 whanau on its books, Mr Rewi said.
‘‘Everything from our pēpē, our future kohanga, right up to our kaumātua and kuia that we’re looking after.
‘‘This will be a community facility — 30% of our clientele are the migrant community.’’
He told the Otago Daily Times it was only while having a coffee with housing trust chief executive Julie Scott recently that he learned the trust had also had its eye on the site for many years.
The housing trust had already prepared plans for the land that included a community building, so it was easy to swap that out for the building that Mana Tāhuna needed.
Ms Scott told councillors it had been interested in developing community housing on the land for eight years.
It had been ‘‘pretty exciting’’ to learn Mana Tāhuna wanted to build a ‘‘whare’’ there.
The ideal outcome was for the council to gift the land to the two organisations, possibly as a ‘‘joint purpose vehicle’’, or to lease it to them in perpetuity, she said.
