The kindergarten had a fight on its hands after a Resource Consent granted by the Central Otago District Council was appealed to the Environment Court.
That appeal was finally withdrawn but not before some serious work was done by Alexandra law firm Bodkins, which provided its legal services for free.
Head teacher Jan Johnson said Bodkins had done an amazing amount of work to get the kindergarten off the ground and the children wanted to say thank you. They walked to Bodkins to sing some songs and present the firm with a large canvas painting and a basket of goodies as an extra thank you.
The appeal had been lodged in May opposing the the building of the new Alexandra Kindergarten on a site next to the Alexandra Primary School.
The kindergarten faced a significant cost in preparing a legal defence to the appeal.
When Bodkins partners Dave Gibson and Kieran Tohill heard of their plight they offered the services of the firm free of charge as it was considered the project was of great importance to the community and the cost of defending the Appeal was too high for the kindergarten to be expected to bear.
Protracted negotiations and discussions were held between Tim Cadogan of Bodkins and the Appellant, alongside the preparation of a defence for the Environment Court sitting.
The matter was successfully resolved in August.
"People often think of lawyers as spending most of their time in the courtroom, but in reality, the opposite is true. Often lawyers are able to act in a negotiator role to bring an agreement between the parties and that is what resulted here," Mr Cadogan said.
