Ladies Mile forced onto QLDC's new HQ location list

Analysis

In an illuminating Queenstown Lakes District Council workshop today, everyone was doing their best to be “open and transparent” but things did not go quite to the script.

In fact, the consultants (Boffa Miskell and BERL), along with QLDC’s special projects manager Paul Speedy (of Lakeview fame) were pretty much told by elected councillors to go back to the drawing board and stop using colours instead of actual data.

The consultants’ colour coded long list of preferred council office sites. The Eastern Corridor (ranked third) is Ladies Mile.

In normal times (not an election year and without a sewage crisis) it would be expected that the consultant’s report would get welcomed with a few token questions and then be given the green light, subject to a full council vote.

But councillors weren’t in the mood to accept the consultants two location recommendation for a new $60 million QLDC headquarters – or Civic Administration Building as they like to call it. Those two locations were: the CBD (with a still alive complex land swap with Ngāi Tahu) or Frankton (no address or land specified).

The consultants used their own colours, with no supporting data, to show their own preferences. The CBD or Frankton.

The “preferred precincts” - CBD or Frankton.

It was easy to imagine that subsequent meetings would somehow nudge back to the CBD given that around $2 million (at least) has already been spent on that option and it has always been the clear preference of council managers.

Frankton felt like an offering to “openness and transparency” but with no work done so far on costs, actual land or even exactly where council staff live. After all, the community had voted in various surveys last year for virtually anywhere except the CBD due to traffic congestion, no parking and a view that the heart and soul of Queenstown had moved to Frankton and beyond.

Plus, most of the community don’t support the idea of a new $60 million council HQ at all – at least until more pressing issues are sorted- like roads, sewage, affordable housing etc.

Presenting at today’s workshop: L - R: Cameron Martyn (Boffa Miskell), Tim Church (Boffa Miskell) and Paul Speedy (QLDC special project manager.)

After what seemed like an endless procession of PowerPoint slides the consultants were told to get a move on as the councillors had lots of questions.

Mayor Glyn Lewers then announced that each councillor would only be allowed to ask one question. This was not met with a positive reaction from the councillors.

Matt Wong asked the “elephant in the room” question that was front of mind for most councillors. “What about Ladies Mile?” Niki Gladding agreed with him making the big point that QLDC already owned suitable land on Ladies Mile.

Flat, empty and council owned - 516 Ladies Mile.

Most councillors were puzzled as to why there was no actual data behind the consultants’ green, orange and red colours. Gavin Bartlett added insult to injury by pointing out that he was colour blind.

Niki Gladding called the study “totally inadequate.”

Matt Wong said that using “local” values (the consultants said they used both local and global metrics to produce their colour codes) Ladies Mile was a “shoo in.”

The consultants answered that “there was nothing there” and a new council building would therefore have to be “highly catalytic.”

Councillor Barry Bruce, appearing by video link from Wānaka, argued for the CBD location saying that “the Sydney Opera House would not work if it was somewhere out in the suburbs. This building needs to be inspirational.”

At this stage mayor Lewers, after coming close to losing his temper with Niki Gladding and other councillors who wanted to ask more than their one allocated question, realised that the tide was against the consultants, and he jumped on board the band wagon.

“Why the colours? Where’s the data?” he asked.

QLDC project manager Paul Speedy was told to include Ladies Mile in the next stage of the work and produce data instead of colours.

There was no discussion on how much the consultants are being paid – or even why they were necessary.

It seems that the elected councillors had already figured out that the only suitable unencumbered flat land that the council already owns is at 516 Ladies Mile.

Work on the planned Ladies Mile sports field has not yet started. Other consultants are still working on it. The land is still empty.