Piha Cafe gearing up to battle for liquor licence

Selling icecreams and glasses of wine may be the cure for winter trading blues for Auckland's Kiwi battler noshery - the Piha Cafe.

The cafe is seeking changes to its stringent resource consents won after a three-year $200,000 legal wrangle to open on the Auckland west coast beach.

Changed conditions would allow it an icecream cart and to serve liquor.

However, it is not certain whether the bid for resource consent will be decided without a public hearing and objections process. Auckland Council yesterday appointed an independent commissioner to hear the application and decide whether it should be publicly notified and opened for public submissions.

Council consents resolutions manager Robert Andrews said the application was "contentious" because sale of liquor was a prominent issue during the original consents hearings.

Other changes related to building alterations and carpark resurfacing.

The cafe opened in October 2009 after reluctantly accepting stringent operating conditions from the Environment Court.

Cafe spokesman Andrew Higgs was unavailable for comment yesterday.

But he told the Herald after the first summer of trading that conditions on the consents were "onerous" for a business to comply with.

The main cafe opponents, Protect Piha Heritage Society, were ordered by the court to pay $5000 towards the council's $80,000 legal bill and $10,000 towards the cafe company's costs.

The society's secretary, Kath Dewar, said yesterday the council surely would allow a full public hearing of the changes to allow the community to determine its future.

"It's disappointing because they made a lot of reassuring noises when they applied for the original consent that no alcohol would be served."

Piha has three licensed premises - the RSA, bowling club and Surf Life Saving Club.

RSA president Rodger Curtice said cafe liquor sales would have little impact on the club's trade.

The two had different trading hours and the cafe could not compete with the prices of the RSA and bowling club.