HUGE WAKATIPU TOURIST SCHEME APPROVED

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31985, 12 May 1969, Page 26

HUGE WAKATIPU TOURIST SCHEME APPROVED

(New Zealand Press Association)

AUCKLAND, May 11.

An English millionaire, Mr George Wiles, a Yorkshire-born industrialist who founded a business empire on second-hand vehicles, has won approval for New Zealand’s biggest tourist development project.

He said from Queenstown this week-end that the way was now clear for the immediate formation of a s3m company to develop his 57,000acre sheep station as a tourist amenity.

Mr Wiles said he would put s2m into the company and open up the rest of the shareholding to New Zealanders. Approval for the development of the Walter Peak Station as a tourist resort has come from the Lake County Council following a series of meetings between Mr Wiles and Government Ministers.

Mr Wiles said the Lake County Council had created for the project a “tourist development zone" within its district planning scheme—the first zone of its kind in New Zealand. The zone covered 1300 acres and provided for the selling of freehold sections to overseas buyers. Mr Wiles said his company would build a “tourist village" of 250 chalets on the station.

The project was planned along the lines of British holiday camps made famous by Sir Billy Butlin and would include an alpine village to take advantage of a skifleld available on the station. Mr Wiles came to New Zea-

land two years ago after a breakdown in health which he suffered because of the demands of his widespread company interests in the United Kingdom. He became a New Zealand citizen to buy the station. He has said that when he arrived in Queenstown he had found his real home for the first time in his life.

Mr Wiles said today the Walter Peak Station development was the biggest tourist and real estate project that New Zealand had experienced.