Landpro has filed a submission to the Central Otago District Council along those lines on behalf of Highlands. The $31 million motorsport complex near Cromwell opened two years ago and the submission is among 108 received by the council in response to its district plan review discussion document.
In the submission, Landpro senior resource management planner Quinn McIntyre asked the council to look at rezoning the park from Rural Resource Area to ''Special Resource Area''.
''Put quite simply, the nature of the HMP [Highlands Motorsport Park] complex has outgrown both its resource consent and the Rural Resource Area which it is located within,'' Mr McIntyre said.
''When the HMP was first conceived, it was never envisaged how busy it would become in such a short space of time.
''This has caused headaches for all stakeholders, largely due to a cumbersome set of conditions that are often unclear and open to interpretation, making operation by the consent holder and the task of regulation by the council particularly challenging in many circumstances.''
Because the existing consent conditions ''lacked direction over certain issues'', Highlands had to make a ''procession of resource consent applications, which is taxing both HMP and council resources as well as providing uncertainty for neighbouring landholders'', the submission said.
The problem was compounded by a ''large gap'' between the consented baseline and the provisions of the Rural Resource Area, which was no longer appropriate to be used as a catch-net for those activities that did not fit within the issues the original consent conditions were designed to control.
Highlands suggested a special zone similar to the McArthur Ridge Resource Area. In 2008, the council agreed to rezone land near Alexandra as the McArthur Ridge Resource Area, to pave the way for a $500 million resort and lifestyle development.
The development stalled and the council recently dealt with an application to rezone the site back to a rural resource area.
The Highlands complex is all zoned Rural Resource Area. The aim of the zone was mostly to provide for activities that relied on the soil resource of the rural area, while ensuring the open space, landscape, natural character and amenity values of the rural environment were sufficiently protected, Mr McIntyre said.
The surrounding area was a ''patchwork of different land uses'' including open rural land, forestry, orchards, rural residential housing, industrial and commercial development, a racecourse and an aerodrome, the submission said.
Rezoning the land as a special purpose zone was an appropriate way to manage the effects of existing and future activities.
The rules of such a zone would ensure a balance was struck between providing for the reasonable economic benefit of the landowner and positive economic spin-offs for the community, as well as protection of the intrinsic values of the surrounding Rural Resource Area.
The district plan discussion document signals potential changes to the district plan and the council's hearings panel will meet for three days this week to hear submissions.
