The Central Otago District Council this week notified the plans of the owners of the Top 10 Holiday Park to gradually subdivide the camping ground, creating a new subdivision called Prospectors Park.
The 13ha Alpha St site would contain 173 residential sections sized between 250sq m and 952sq m, five new roads and six recreation reserves.
It requires subdivision consent as parts of the plan are non-complying activities, and land-use consent to create residential allotments on rurally zoned land.The project would be completed in three stages and the timing would depend on demand for the sections, but was expected to take five years.
A statement from land surveyor Landpro, which made the consent application on behalf of the holiday park’s owners, said ‘‘several dozen’’ sections could be on the market within months if consent was granted.
Development is planned to start on the northern boundary of the park and will include residential sections, green ways and recreational areas. Cromwell Community Board chairman Neil Gillespie said the board was ‘‘very mindful’’ of the potential impact of having no camping ground in the town, but he imagined the market would fill the gap fairly quickly.
‘‘There have been a number of parties talking about creating a holiday park here in the future.’’The nearest camping grounds would be the two in Bannockburn, 7km away.
He doubted the lack of a camping ground would have a significant flow-on effect to freedom camping areas, Mr Gillespie said.
‘‘Generally, freedom-camping people don’t want to pay for campgrounds and campground people don’t want to freedom-camp. There’s no comparison between them.’’
The main risk would be not having a space in the town for holidaymakers who wanted to stay in a camping ground.
The plan was ‘‘without a doubt’’ positive in terms of aiding growth in the town’s residential housing, Mr Gillespie said.
‘‘There are not a lot of sections around. It’s obviously a positive thing. They’ve still got to go through a process though — it’s not a done deal yet, he said.
‘‘I don’t know what will happen with the market and developers have to take that risk.’’Central Otago Mayor Tim Cadogan said if the camping ground closed, there was a chance another would take its place.
He did not want to comment further on the proposal while it was in the consent process.The holiday park is nearly 50 years old and since 1992 has been owned by Richard Wallis, Catherine Woods and John and Kay Searle.
They could not be contacted yesterday, but in a statement Mr Searle said when they put the park on the market earlier this year, the top tenders all came from developers.
‘‘It became quite clear early on no-one really wanted to buy it and keep it running as a holiday park.’’After 25 years spent building the park to more than double its original size
and hosting the same families over that time, they did not want to see ‘‘hard work and happy memories gone just like that’’, the statement said.
They also wanted to be able to spend Christmases with family after working 25 consecutive summers.
There was a ‘‘real need’’ for residential sections and houses for young families coming to Cromwell, Mr Searle and Mr Wallis said in the statement.
Submissions on the proposal close on October 5.
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So as I understand it, messrs Searle and Wallis appear to be saying there is no other land in the Cromwell, Ripponvale, Bannockburn and Lowburn area available for housing; ergo, the long established camp-ground must go.
I believe there's a word for that--codswallop!