Feedback sought for future of Wanaka's town centre

Wanaka Community Board deputy chairman Chris Hadfield regrets that ratepayers missed a trick and the council did not buy a lakefront house that belonged to Olive and Graham West. It is now the site of the commercial buildings behind him. PHOTOS: MARJORIE COOK

As questions linger over a vision for Wanaka’s town centre, the community is being asked to get on board and have its say. Marjorie Cook reports.

Town centre development and intensification anywhere is confronting.

Communities contend with traffic jams, vanishing car parks and invasions of orange traffic cones.

But that was not when ratepayers should have noticed — they needed to be involved from the start, the community-driven Heart of Wanaka working group said.

Wanaka townsfolk have tried for the better part of two decades to get a vision of town centre development adopted by the Wanaka Community Board and the Queenstown Lakes District Council.

Over the next couple of months Heart of Wanaka will give it another go, hoping to set the town centre scene for the next 50 years.

They will present their research to the Wanaka Community Board at the end of this month before bringing the community on board in February.

Heart of Wanaka members Chris Hadfield, Andrew "Howie" Howard and Garth Falconer are excited about the possibilities for better connections between the lake and the central business district.

It was time to get it right, they said.

"This is really exciting because it is a community-driven initiative," Mr Falconer said.

"If we can’t get our act together, people should not be complaining."

Mr Hadfield admitted he was in a stirring frame of mind and was keen to discover if the community would dare suggest to a group of Ardmore St property owners — mainly the Queenstown Lakes District Council, developer Allan Dippie and Ngai Tahu — that they bulldoze everything between Ardmore and Dunmore Sts.

"I encourage people to think [of] a blank sheet. Start again as if nothing was there," he said.

There is an opportunity for greenfield dreaming as ratepayers own a large chunk of Ardmore St land.

But Mr Howard, the Heart of Wanaka chairman, acknowledged there might not be much Heart of Wanaka can do to influence the design of other, existing infrastructure.

Nor may it be able to influence recently proposed hotel developments now in the resource consent pipeline.

But Wanaka still had a future so it was important locals spoke up about what they wanted, he said.

Wanaka town centre access should be easy for pedestrians, cyclists and motorists, the Heart of Wanaka group says.

"There are so many things happening in Wanaka. We are growing rapidly again, Three Parks is developing at pace, visitors are returning strongly. And at the moment there is no structure at all around how our town centre is going to develop.

"It’s been years and there’s still no indication how the council is going to create a town centre plan."

Mr Howard said that it was critical for some form of structure to be in place to enhance and maintain the town’s business community, peoples access to the town, the lakefront, and the environment.

"If our town continues to grow, and we continue to get more cars coming in, it won’t take much more for people to not want to come into our town centre anymore. It will become too hard."

Heart of Wanaka has done its homework. During the last six months, it held multiple drop in sessions, doorknocked retailers, and talked to property owners, Friends of Pembroke Park and Friends of Bullock Creek.

A wide perspective was needed before getting too far into the detail, Mr Howard said.

"It’s been really interesting. Talking with a diverse range of groups, everyone has the same understanding and visions of our town centre.

"They recognise it connects to the lake, the importance of the environment, its role as a centre for the community. These principles are the ones Heart of Wanaka wants to preserve and enhance," he said.

Heart of Wanaka has talked with QLDC staff about transport plans and infrastructure.

Mr Howard has not yet spoken to developer, Tony Gapes, who plans to build a 143-bed hotel on Ardmore St, along with retail and accommodation offerings, and how that might fit into Wanaka locals’ urban design principles.

The Otago Daily Times has contacted Mr Gapes and his colleague Jo McDonald.

Ms McDonald said in an email they could not comment before January 16.

Mr Howard said hotel proposals were interesting and it was "absolutely valid" to consider the designs might form a baseline.

"They are being driven by the developers’ ideas of what will work and won’t work rather than the community’s ideas of what will work and won’t work.

"We need a plan that has some principles in it about what type of development [would work for the community] ... and we need to be considering the environment and the carbon footprint."

Wanaka once had an urban design forum of architects and landscape designers who would be invited to comment on resource consent applications, although their opinions held no regulatory weight.

The forum disbanded and Heart of Wanaka member Garth Falconer believed it needed to reform.

Mr Falconer helped many community groups put town centre proposals together all over the country.

The Heart of Wanaka group wants community feedback on how they want their town centre to look.

He was one of the principal thinkers behind Wanaka’s recently completed lakefront and boardwalk projects and has worked with many New Zealand communities on town centre projects.

Heart of Wanaka wanted to clearly communicate and manifest the community’s aspirations so that the board and council would adopt a town centre plan and fund staged projects over the next five to 10 years, he said.

The last town centre plan presentation, in 2019, did not get over the line with the board.

Much had been learned and there had been wider consultation this time, he said.

Three Parks’s role as a large format retail centre made the role of the town centre as the community hub all the more clearer, Mr Falconer said.

The town centre had been defined as the long lake edge of Roys Bay, surrounded by the green spaces linking Wanaka Station Park to Lismore Park.

An integrated plan should make it easy for everyone — pedestrians, cyclists and motorists — to get around, he said.

It should focus on social facilities, gatherings and exchanges. The planning regime may need to be changed to get improved design, greater intensification and a required range of activities, he said.

When the plans come out, they will reveal ideas for planting, sustainable treatment of storm water, community areas, how the lakefront could tie in with Helwick St.

A series of jetties extending into the lake would also be suggested.

Ultimately, Mr Falconer hoped the plans would give power to the community.

"This is a new way of putting these plans together and we are really hopeful and optimistic that all the good work and good intentions of all the thoughts of groups and individuals will give us a good foundation."