NZsnowboard.com

Ensuring there was never anotehr fatal accident on the Treble Cone ski area access road was the prime motivation behind a $20 million gondola proposal, commissioners heard yesterday.

Three young people lost their lives when their car inexplicably left the road in 2003 and an overseas visitor died in 1988 when a campervan went over the edge.

Snowline Holdings director and project planner John Darby said the fatal accidents were a major concern to the company.

"The No.1 job on our hands is to remove the road risk factor and the safety issues," he siad.

The gondola project was on of the first steps in a wider development that included a further gondola reaching the mountain summit view point, a restaurant, further expansion of the skifield and a network of summer walking and mountainbiking tracks, for which the company had yet to seek approval.

The completed development would cater for 5000 visitors.

The company hopes to build the 3300m gondola, rising from Cattle Flat, at the base of the currnet access road, to the skifield, in time for the 2008 ski season.

Economist Mike Copeland said it could increase the district's annual income by up to $4.7 million and generate almost $13 million in additional expenditure in the local economy.

The plan attracted overwhelming public support after it was publicly notified this year, with 881 of a total 928 submissions in favour.

However, representatives of the Queenstown Lakes District Council's planning contractor, CivilCorp, have recommended the proposal be refused because of its adverse effects on the landscape.

Snowline Holdings lawyer Warwick Goldsmith said the planners' report failed to mention the positive transport and economic effects of the proposal.

"I'm suggesting there's a bit of a one-sided approach to this assessment and that a fair blanace has not been applied.

"It isn't just more efficient access to the skifield - it isn't just safer - it is the creation of a unique, in the southern hemisphere, year-round recreational facility to get people from the valley floor to the mountain top to experience the wonderful views," he said.

It was undeniable the gondola would have a visual impact and it would be significant from nearby, but that did not mean it would be an adverse effect.

While the planners' report claimed it would be visable from 12km away, Goldsmith said it would only be possible to "pick it out" from 5km away.

Some submitters had suggested the company upgrade the road but that would cost between $13m and $17m, compared with $16.5m for the gondola, without the base building and associated facilities.

Speaking in support of the proposal, Wanaka motelier and a Treble Cone minority shareholder Richard Hutchison described the road as "an absolute horror show"

"Many peopel faced with driving up there are reasonably intimidated. But those I have driven up myself in the summer months are absolutely spellbound."

"It will beome an iconic institution of New Zealand"

The three-day resource consent hearing continues today before independant commissioner David Collins and Queenstown Lakes District Councillor Gillian Macleod.

SOURCE: THE PRESS
ARTICLE: By DEBBIE JAMIESON

LINK: www.treblecone.co.nz