Three-day party may be forced to Frankton
The organisers of next month’s Snow Machine music fest and skifield partner NZSki are gutted they’ve been refused use of the Queenstown Recreation Ground for the event’s nightly gigs — despite the former dangling a $500,000 carrot to fix the ground.
Mayor Glyn Lewers on Wednesday told organisers the Rec Ground — their first-choice venue — was out of bounds.
His main concern was what state the field would be in after three nights’ partying by 5000 people, given it’s the finish-line for November’s huge Queenstown Marathon, which attracts about 12,000 runners.
The organisers now also have to face canning their second-choice venue, the Queenstown Primary School (QPS) grounds, where the inaugural event was held.
Snow Machine had applied for resource consent, but faced opposition from neighbouring Kiwi Park, whose breeding season had been disturbed when Snow Machine was held at the same time last year.
Organisers will now probably drop this venue after being told on Tuesday they only had two days to get ‘affected party’ approvals.
As a result, they’re now likely to use their third-choice venue, Frankton’s Remarkables Park.
$500,000 offer for ground use rejected
Ironically, council had originally offered them the Events Centre’s main oval or no.4 field, but they’d turned it down as they didn’t want to add 100 buses on to Frankton Rd during peak traffic.
In pursuing the Rec Ground, Snow Machine had offered council $500,000 over five years to fix its drainage problem.
Lewers, speaking on Wednesday, says he took advice from council officers before turning down the Rec Ground.
He notes it wasn’t just the state of the ground for the marathon they were worried about but also its use for other upcoming events like a kids’ global rugby tournament and an Otago Country rugby game next Saturday.
In relation to the $500,000 offer, ‘‘you never look a gift horse in the mouth, but it probably doesn’t fall into the right timing or category for capital work for that field at the moment’’.
Lewers also doesn’t think $500,000 would ‘‘quite make the cut to actually rehabilitate it or get it to a state where it could handle that amount of people’’.
The ground, he notes, is also a stormwater retention basin, so, during a heavy rainfall, it retains water deliberately.
He feels it’s ‘‘a little bit frustrating’’ organisers didn’t take up council’s offer to use other parks, including the Events Centre.
Snow Machine might have ‘‘legitimate concerns’’ about transporting so many people on Frankton Rd, but Lewers says Bay Dream South’s planning double that number for its Events Centre festival in January, ‘‘and they’re happy to work through a transport management plan with us’’.
He also claims the organisers left it late — ‘‘two weeks before we talked [on July 13]’’ — to apply for the QPS grounds.
‘‘From the advice I’ve received from council officers, we provided a consenting advice and a pathway back in April.
‘‘That was not taken up.’’
As for facing criticism over his decision, Lewers says: ‘‘As I’ve found out in this job, you’re not chocolate and you can’t please everyone.’’
‘No good reason to can Rec Ground’
‘Load of bullshit’: Snow Machine director Quentin Nolan
By killing the Rec Ground as a party venue, council is removing $15 million of economic benefit from central Queenstown businesses.
So say Snow Machine director Quentin Nolan and skifield partner NZSki’s CEO, Paul Anderson.
‘‘I think central Queenstown businesses will be extremely disappointed by the lack of support from council, and I certainly hope they let the mayor and the councillors know that,’’ Anderson says.
‘‘We’re in a post-Covid recovery, but the council just seems to continue to make things very difficult for those businesses to operate with major roadwork disruption and now this on top of it.’’
Anderson says they’d tried to engage with mayor Glyn Lewers ‘‘because we thought this issue needed some political leadership, but, unfortunately, Glyn hasn’t been able to provide that for us’’.
He adds they’d been meeting with council since last October to try to secure the Rec Ground, originally with CEO Mike Theelen, then with Ken Bailey, and they’d ‘‘jumped through a lot of hoops they put in front of us’’.
Both Anderson and Nolan don’t believe Lewers’ reason for canning the Rec Ground stacks up.
Nolan: ‘‘Their reasoning is they’re not satisfied it will be in a good condition for the marathon which is two-and-a-half months later.
‘‘It’s an absolute load of bullshit, really — we offered to put ground protection over the whole thing.’’
It’s the same system used in major stadia around the world, Anderson says, ‘‘and at [Auckland’s] Eden Park they actually played a game of cricket the next day’’.
As for the Frankton option, he believes it’ll undermine the guests’ experience.
‘‘We all know the state of Frankton Rd and how slow that is, so unfortunately we’re going to have to put a lot of buses on Frankton Rd for the patrons, and it means they’re less likely to go out when they go back to town because they’ve had to sit on a bus in traffic and get there.’’
Nolan, meanwhile, denies they were too late in lodging their consent for the primary school grounds.
‘‘It was more than two months prior to the event, which fits under their timing guidelines.’’
He also says council agreed to process it on a conditional basis while he got affected party approvals.
Events Centre for summer music fest
Successful trial: Audiology’s Mardi Gras at the Events Centre in June
Outdoors at Queenstown Events Centre’s been confirmed as the venue for another music festival, this time just after New Year.
Audiology’s bringing Bay Dream South here on January 5 after hosting it for the past five years in Nelson, having successfully trialled the venue when it staged Mardi Gras in June.
Mardi Gras was attended by about 5000 people, whereas the organisers expect 10,000-plus to rock up in January.
Director Mitch Lowe last month told Otago Daily Times Queenstown’s now where the ‘‘South Island wants to go’’ for music festivals.
It also makes sense to stage it oon after Rhythm & Alps, near Cardrona, he says, to ‘‘amplify that event’’.
‘‘We know it’ll complement everything else the region has to offer over the holiday period,’’ Audiology’s Toby Burrows says.
Asked how they expect out-of-towners to find accommodation at one of the busiest times of the year, he says: “We will not be offering camping, but Queenstown has more accommodation than almost any other city we run events in over this period.
“There are a lot of people in the surrounding areas for the period at holiday homes, etc, also.
“We will be running an extensive bus system to a number of the surrounding areas.
“A lot of people will be from out of town, but already in town for that period.”
