Council keen to buy block

Press, 3 June 1983, Page 1

Council keen to buy block

The Heathcote County Council will negotiate to buy all or part of the 532 ha Bowenvale block on the Port Hills if it is passed in at auction today.

The decision was made at a special meeting of the council yesterday. The chairman, Mr W. M. Hindmarsh, moved that the issue be considered in committee and the motion was passed with only Cr M. C. C. Buchanan dissenting. Mr Hindmarsh said later that the council wanted to buy the land for reserve purposes but that it would not bid. Instead it would enter private negotiations with the vendor if the property failed to sell at auction. • The block, which is grazed by 4000 sheep and 25 cattie at present, is only skm south of Cathedral Square and includes Huntsbury and St Martins spurs. It has a 1980 Government valuation of $644,000. However, land prices rose steeply in 1981 because of the impact of the General Election on the

economy. The council commissioned a private valuation of the property which it received at the meeting. Mr Hindmarsh declined to comment on the difference between the Government’s outdated valuation and the council’s one. He said that the council had paid “a substantial sum” for the valuation and that it was the council’s property. The council did not want to buy the land as an investment but for planning purposes, he said. It retained its long-held interest in creating a reserve on the land and, because the block was “highly visible,” it wanted to ensure that it was not developed haphazardly. Mr Hindmarsh said that the property was held under a number of separate titles, including 50 10-acre (4ha) blocks, and that the council wanted to amalgamate them. “We want the whole block to be part of a development scheme, not 25 different developments,” he said.