Auckland’s Shundi Group has battled through a drawn-out consenting process since buying the bare Frankton Rd site for $10.5 million in 2016.
After originally proposing a $60m, 68-room building for the 4656sqm site, with views of Lake Wakatipu, it later added a storey to increase capacity to 82 rooms and four suites.
That proposal was rejected by the Queenstown Lakes District Council in 2020, mainly over concerns about vehicle access from Frankton Rd and the impact on traffic and parking in nearby side streets.
However, the resort town’s arterial bypass project — one end of which starts near the land — gave the company an opportunity to revise its vehicle-access design.
That got the council on board with the proposal, but several neighbours remained opposed and an appeal hearing went ahead in the Environment Court in 2021.
The court’s latest decision comes after the company made more design tweaks — by Wales & Mason Architects’ Ashley Muir — to mitigate those concerns. It has now settled on a design for 75 rooms and four suites, along with a restaurant, bar and meeting rooms.
The decision said the revised proposal satisfied the legal requirements for granting consent, and its final decision would follow after updated planning documents were filed.
The area’s high-density residential zoning required visitor accommodation development to "respect residential amenity values", the decision said.
Without those, the building would have resulted in "significant unfairness and disenfranchisement" for neighbours.
Shundi Group, building New Zealand’s tallest residential tower in Auckland, is the local arm of a Shanghai-based development company.
It did not respond to a request for comment by deadline.
