Context
In its statement of expectations to Queenstown Airport Corp, the QLDC councillors ask QAC to actively resist the Tarras airport proposal. Yet neither QAC nor Queenstown Lakes District Council has undertaken any analysis to understand the Tarras proposal’s potential benefits to the district.
It’s one thing for a private person or company to act unilaterally with little knowledge. But Council’s two responsibilities under the local government act 2002 are to enable democratic local decision-making and to promote the well-being of communities for now and future. A question so fundamental as the district’s airport infrastructure requires deep levels of understanding and public consultation.
In this presentation, we highlight the massive financial gain to Queenstown Lakes District ratepayers if airline flights could be transferred to Tarras.
Could councillors lock in an obstructive strategy without first considering it?
QLDC full council meeting
February 3, 2022
Kia ora, I am John Hilhorst representing FlightPlan2050
The Lakeview Precinct is an inspired Council endeavour that will deliver urban density within walking distance of the Queenstown CBD. Within its 10 hectares, it aims to accommodate 18 hundred residents in a broad mix of accommodation options, all in attractive settings.
Council’s control leverage, together with a single developer, has been the key to ensuring we get the best from this integrated and cohesive development.
The developers, Ninety-Four Feet and Augusta Capital, will end up with a projected 100-million dollar profit and billion-dollar asset. They could sell this for capital gain or, as property managers, enjoy ongoing annual lease revenues of some 100 million.
For its share, Council is assured just 27 million dollars, paid out over a decade or more.
Imagine for a moment if Council actually owned the development company? Then, instead of a modest one-off payout, Council would end up as the beneficial owner, in ten or so years’ time, of a billion-dollar asset that paid substantial annual dividends.
This is precisely the opportunity the proposed Tarras airport presents. QAC owns 160 hectares of essentially bare land. That’s 16 times the size of the Lakeview Precinct. It’s in the middle of what the Spatial Plan identifies as our region’s future principal metropolitan centre.
Transferring the numbers, QAC could develop a 16-billion-dollar asset with a 1.6-billion-dollar profit by developing a town centre accommodating 29,000 people within its current landholding. That’s 32 times QAC’s pre-covid enterprise value.
Those who say “there’s some value in the land, but we need an airport more” are choosing to remain uninformed. There is massive financial and urban planning value in the land, and a Tarras airport location would retain the crucial connectivity our district needs.
We don’t yet know whether the Tarras proposal will fly. But, obstinately choosing to blindly fight it in a ten-year strategy without first thoroughly investigating the opportunities, would fail your responsibility to your communities and your duties under the Local Government Act.
The draft statement of expectations before you today tasks QAC to fight the Tarras proposal to ensure the primacy of Queenstown Airport. It fixates on a predetermined lesser outcome with no effort to assess alternatives, as good governance would require.
We ask that instead, you task QAC to properly consider all options, and direct it to protect the viability of eventual closure of the airport, for all but vertical lift-off and landing.
Thank you.
Ngā mihi e noho rā