A Queenstown Lakes District Council planner has recommended an application for a new church and two manses at Frankton be declined.
The Otago Foundation Trust Board lodged a resource application on behalf of the Wakatipu Community Presbyterian Church earlier this year seeking subdivision and land use consent for an 8ha rural general-zoned site on the Frankton-Ladies Mile, near the Hawthorne Dr roundabout on State Highway 6.
The land is owned by the Hansen Family Partnership with which the church had a legal contract regarding one lot, where the new church was proposed.
The application said, at present, the Wakatipu Community Presbyterian Church operated from three church buildings - one on Stanley St in Queenstown, one in Frankton and one in Arrowtown and had four ministers who either lived in church-owned manses, or rented accommodation.
But the church congregations and community groups were outgrowing the existing buildings and proposed a two-stage development at Frankton to replace the two Queenstown churches and two manses.
The first stage was for a 1265sq m church with a 15m-high steeple, including a 70-seat chapel, smaller rooms, offices, a kitchen, toilets, mothers' room and cafe.
Additionally, the church proposed an indoor court on the site, to double as a Civil Defence welfare centre and two 85sq m residential building platforms for proposed manses, along with earthworks, access, landscaping, car parking and recreational activities.
The second stage was a longer-term vision, which comprised a mixed-residential community centre around the church and would include two more manses, 13 separately saleable residential units, 14 licence-to-occupy retirement units, a visitor accommodation hostel, children's playground, and community gardens.
Also part of stage two was a new internal road connecting to a new road off the Hawthorne Dr roundabout, additional car and bus parking, earthworks and landscaping.
The resource consent application sought to subdivide the site into two lots - 2.8ha for the church and one as a ''balance lot''.
The application attracted 46 submissions - 41 of those were in support and none were opposed.
However, council senior resource consent planner Andrew Woodford's report recommended consent be refused because adverse effects of the proposal would be ''more than minor'' with respect to adverse effects on rural character, landscape and the visual amenity of the land zoned rural general, which had not been suitably avoided, remedied or mitigated.
Mr Woodford said it was, overall, contrary to the relevant objectives and policies of the operative and proposed district plan which would ''introduce development of a scale that results in adverse character, landscape and visual effects on the rural general landscape''.
Further, it did not promote the overall purpose of the Resource Management Act (RMA).
While there may be ''some potential'' to address the adverse effects with a more detailed mitigation planting concept and amend the ''proposed lighter colour palette to more recessive rural colours'', any significant changes may lead to re-notification and further assessment, he said.
The proposal will go to a resource consent hearing in Queenstown on December 18.
