The Olive Leaf — a Gaudi-inspired building to be funded by donations — is the brainchild of architect Fred van Brandenburg, first revealed four years ago.
The planned building features a leaf-shaped floating roof, with a maximum building height of about 3.5m, a water feature which would capture rainwater from the roof before it travelled down the "leaf" stem to the basement floor level, structural glass mullions across the upper floor and stone and brick renders.
It would include a church and community hall, with capacity of 100, a kitchen, meeting area and adjoining courtyard, a crypt and three bedrooms, primarily to be used by visiting clergy.
Proposed earthworks were 4152cu m cut to depths of up to 6.5m.
Twenty-nine on-site car parks were proposed, in two locations.
A total of 368 submissions were received when the Olive Leaf Centre Trust’s proposal went out for public consultation last year — 218 in support and 150 opposed.
In her report, Queenstown Lakes District Council resource consents team leader Alana Standish considered the adverse effects of the proposal were more than minor.
Ms Standish said the scale of the building combined with extensive landscaping would "significantly obscure" the church, taking away from its primacy and adversely affecting the "simple open and spacious values of the site".
Car parking, as proposed, would clutter the site, resulting in adverse effects on the heritage character of the site and zone. Traffic effects were not contained to the site because unsealed parking was "weather dependent".
Further, "no suitable management for larger events" was proposed.
"As a result, the unrestricted number of large events and hours of operation will result in adverse residential amenity effects that [will not be] suitably avoided or mitigated.
"Resultant on-street car parking during inclement weather will also adversely affect residential amenity as parking is pushed further into residential streets."
It was also contrary to objectives and policies of the district plan and did not meet the overall purpose of the Resource Management Act, she said.
A three-day resource consent hearing has been scheduled to start in Queenstown on August 19.
