Front-runner: Queenstown's mayor-elect Glyn Lewers and his partner Prue Watson

Queenstown’s mayor-elect hopes to uphold his campaign promise to provide parking in Stanley Street ‘‘by Christmas’’.

But he’ll be racing against the clock to do it.

The final result of the election has Glyn Lewers, 44, with the mayoral chains — at last count, he received 4382 votes, 613 ahead of Jon Mitchell (3796), with Olivia Wensley polling third (2531), followed by Al Angus (821), Neeta Shetty (541) and Wānaka’s Daniel Shand
(201).

The final voter return was 43.05%, being 12,092 votes.

On the campaign trail Lewers was adamant there’d be carparking on Stanley St before the busy summer season.

He tells Mountain Scene the wheels are turning.

The former QPACT building’s been demolished and council’s lodged a resource consent application with itself to turn the 2816 square metre site into a ‘‘temporary’’ carpark — for up to 10 years — catering to almost 60 vehicles, including at least two accessible parks and possibly
nine EV parks.

It’s the first stage of a proposed three-stage parking development which will ultimately accommodate 170-odd vehicles.

The application, lodged in August, says it’ll take about 20 weeks for the carpark to be readied — it’s now 10 weeks till Christmas.

Lewers says it’s looking ‘‘encouraging’’ for the consent application to be expedited and hopes his new councillors will support the proposal, which will require a budget allocated to it, ‘‘because, obviously, those decisions are made by all of us’’.

Meantime, council’s temporary 130-space Lakeview carpark finally opened on Tuesday — council lodged consent for that last November.

Your new councillors

Queenstown-Whakatipu ward
Matt Wong (2162)
Esther Whitehead (1821)
Gavin Bartlett (1584)
Niki Gladding (1503)

Arrowtown-Kawarau ward
Craig ‘Ferg’ Ferguson (2436)
Lisa Guy (1808)
Neeta Shetty (1445)

Wānaka-Upper Clutha ward
Quentin Smith (3467)
Barry Bruce (2567)
Lyal Cocks (2389)
Cody Tucker (2269)

*Based on preliminary results

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