Boating club hits a reef

By WAYNE THOMPSON

Conservation Minister Chris Carter has called for work to stop on a $500,000 boating clubrooms at Takapuna Beach until questions over its leased reserve site are resolved.

The minister said the North Shore City Council should not have issued the Takapuna Boating Club a new lease of reserve land in March without the lease being publicly advertised.

All building work should stop on the clubroom until this was done and the council had considered all objections and submissions received.

The news has shocked Takapuna Boating Club officials as they prepare for a ceremony on December 14 where the foundation plaque is to be unveiled by Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

Club president Ralph Roberts said yesterday he knew nothing about the minister's instructions.

"That's a load of nonsense," said the former Olympic yachtsman and official who invited Mr Rogge, an old sailing friend from Belgium.

"The club has been there for 15 years and we've just been given a lease for another 20 years."



Mr Roberts said it was a small club which aimed to teach youngsters how to sail, and it could not afford to pay for a public hearing into its lease.

Mr Carter says in a letter to opponents of the development, the Save Takapuna Beach Committee, that investigations by his department show the portion of reserve occupied by the clubrooms at the northern end of the beach had not been formally classified under the Reserves Act.

This meant that the management plan for the reserve under which the council approved the club's plans last year could not be operative.

The Auckland Conservator had brought this to the council's attention, wrote the minister.

It was recommended that all further redevelopment of the clubrooms be halted until the lease was advertised and the council considered all objections and submissions received.

The council could then properly decide whether to issue a fresh lease to the club.

The council's community services general manager, Loretta Burnett, said the council believed building could continue. The club's old lease on the land did not run out until November next year.

In the meantime, she said, the council would investigate the technical issue over its reserve management plan which the minister had raised.

Jean Revill, of the Save Takapuna Beach Committee, said the letter brought into question the way the council allowed demolition of the old clubrooms, in a building owned by the council.

Further reading
nzherald.co.nz/marine