Feasibility of restoring buildings assessed

This historic timber barn at Arranmore Farm in Frankton is one of four deteriorating buildings...
This historic timber barn at Arranmore Farm in Frankton is one of four deteriorating buildings for which the Queenstown District Lakes Council is considering a restoration feasibility study. Photo by Joe Dodgshun.
A feasibility study for the restoration of deteriorating buildings at Arranmore Farm - one of the Queenstown Lakes district's earliest farms - is to be explored, the Queenstown Lakes District Council strategy committee decided this week.

Buildings on the Frankton Flats farm include a timber barn (owned by QLDC), and a timber woodshed, stone dairy and stone smithy owned by the Queenstown Airport Corporation (QAC).

QLDC planners said the structures were likely to be more than 100 years old.

The committee moved to explore the possibility of sharing costs of the estimated $23,000 study, with the QAC funding 75% and QLDC the remainder.

"Feasibility studies are fine, but have we got any idea of what's going to happen? Is it going to be a model historic farm, visitors paying to come and see, or is it ... just going to sit there and do nothing?" Cr Mel Gazzard asked.

QLDC senior policy analyst, Sue Mavor, replied that the feasibility study would indicate whether such uses could be possible.

"One of the main points of the feasibility study is to look at the uses for those buildings and then what the costs would be to try to upgrade them to accommodate those uses," she said.

The QAC buildings are used for storage, and Lakes Leisure has reportedly expressed an interest in expanding its sports fields up to and including the land around the barn, but has not considered any potential adaptive use of the barn.

Concerns about the physical deterioration of the buildings were raised by the Queenstown and District Historical society in a submission to the 2005 District Plan change on heritage.

All four buildings are now legally protected under the plan as category 2 buildings, but are not being physically protected or maintained.

 

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