Council to sell service lane land

Ruapehu Bulletin, Volume 13, Issue 606, 3 October 1995, Page 3

Council to sell service lane land

Waimarino Communitv Board recommendation to tag for future use as Ohakune shops service lane use ignored

Apiece of council land that could be crucial to providing a service lane to Ohakune shops is to be sold to a commercial property owner. In making the decision last Friday to sell the piece of land that the relocated Peach Cornwall & Partners building now partly sits on in Ayr Street, the Ruapehu District Council decided to ignore a recommendation from the Waimarino Community Board to add a condition to the sale, that sale negotiations would take into consideration the provision of a service lane.

Originally the council was to sell to Ohakune Shopping Centre (PC&P' s landlord), just the piece it needed for the office, but the group's valuer indicated that the subdivision of the section would leave an irregular narrow block with very limited development potential and that OSC would have an area of unusable "dead" land. So OSC has applied to purchase the whole section at a price "based on a valuation for the whole of Section 15 net of any lessees' improvements". Council property officer Alan Low told the

board that OSC had a perpetual lease on the land and to "publicly tender any disposal would place OSC in a disadvantaged position with possible recourse to litigation." Board member John Compton said at the community board meeting that the board would not be consistent if they did not make an effort to tie the sale into the provision of the service lane having expressed support for the service lane. Mr Low outlined various legal and practical reasons why he felt the council could not or should not provide a service lane for the shops.

He said precedents in law "indicate it is not competent for a council to provide . . . a service lane where there is no prospect of the lane

being used by the public". Later, he said placing a caveat to provide the service lane "is considered inappropriate in the circumstances as any such long-term access development within that block may not require a service lane or access to be placed on this particular property". He told councillors if a service lane and parking area were found to be required (through the Mainstreet town design project or the town planner's investigations), land could be acquired from a number of property owners and the Public Works

Act could be used. He said access would not necessarily be across the land in question but could be via the old post office.