Urging Mt. Cook Building

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30983, 12 February 1966, Page 1

Urging Mt. Cook Building

A considerable increase in tourist accommodation in the Mount Cook area will be urged on the Government as a result of a joint meeting this week of representatives of the Canterbury Progress League, the South Island Publicity Association, and the Canterbury Chamber of Commerce. The three organisations will sugest multi-storey buildings: the separation of the Hermitage area from the Mount Cook National Park: and the admission of private builders to the area. Alpine village development at Glentanner and Birch Hill should be deferred until these ideas had been examined, the meeting decided.

Mr G. R. Burrowes, president of the Progress League, said his members had been concerned at the shortage of acommodation at certain tourist resorts in the South Island. In an endeavour to assist the authorities, the league called the joint meeting this week to consider the pressing need in the Hermitage area in particular. “The league feels that more accommodation with graded tariffs should be provided,” said Mr Burrowes.

This week's meeting followed an inspection visit last October.

The proposal to establish an alpine village in the Mount Cook area was considered to require more investigations but, after a questionnaire to persons interested, the “great majority” favoured the Glentanner site. The joint meeting of representatives has made the fol-

■ lowing unanimous recommendations which will be referred to the next monthly meetings of the three groups: “1. This meeting is of the definite and unanimous opinion that the utmost pressures must be put on the authorities to implement their building plan so that the Tourist Hotel Corporation building programme is put in hand and as many additional beds as possible will be available at the opening of the 1966-7 tourist season. “2. To provide continuing accommodation, an adequate survey be made to determine the practicability of multistorey accommodation in the Hermitage area. “3. The Hermitage area should be allocated .for tourist facility build-up and lifted out of the National Park and administered in the same manner as any town or borough under the provisions

of the Municipal Corporations Act but with a planning code of ordinances which make it compatible with its situation inside a national park.

“4. This meeting considers that sites should be made available for private enterprise to build various standards of accommodation in the Hermitage area and. in principle, no exclusive rights be given to any one party. "5. On the Glentanner and Birch Hill sites, it is the opinion of this meeting that action here be deferred because of the priorities and urgencies outlined in the above recommendations. “6. On authority of the representative bodies concerned, a strong deputation should proceed to Weilington to press for implementation of these resolutions with the necessary Ministers of the Crown and other authorities concerned."