Dept ‘dragging chain on gondola’

Press, 15 February 1989, Page 12

Dept ‘dragging chain on gondola’

By

GLEN PERKINSON

The state of limbo for the 56 million Port Hills gondola finally prompted anger from the developer behind the project yesterday. The tourist attraction proposed almost four years ago is still waiting for approval for its Mt Cavendish site. It has been through local authority town planning hearings, a special commissioner’s investigation, a Planning Tribunal appeal, a Conservation Department inquiry and a Crown Law Office inquest of that department’s report. Now the proposal is before the Minister of Conservation, Mr Philip Woollaston, after being looked at by his predecessor, Ms Helen Clark, since before Christmas. It is eight months since a Planning Tribunal gave the proposal its sanction. Yesterday, Mr Bruce Alexander, the planner behind the gondola, claimed the department and the Minister were “just hoping the problem will go away.” He thought the department was dragging the chain on the Minister’s decision in the hope Payeo Developments would bail put because of mounting costs.

Taking the gondola proposal through planning appeals and being prepared to build the tourist attraction was costing Payeo “tens of thousands of dollars.”

Mr Alexander said Payeo had “no idea what was happening with the Minister’s review of the gondola.”

Yesterday, Mr Woollaston said he did not know when his decision on the gondola would be finalised.