Developer told to lodge $100k bond with council, given deadline over dirt pile
Thursday, 4 April 2024
The developer of Timaru’s The Showgrounds retail centre will be allowed to split the development as requested, but the council is demanding a $100k bond and a non-negotiable deadline for the removal of a large pile of materials at the centre.
In October, developer Tony Gapes explained the changes would allow for the development to be done in two stages and for titles to be issued for the first four lots which have been built on.
Gapes said it was common for developments such as The Showgrounds to have buildings sitting on separate lots, and it would provide the developer with “additional flexibility on funding“.
In explaining the application, Gapes also gave an assurance that a large stockpile of of materials would be gone by May.
It was “slowly getting smaller as it is being spread around the site, and should all be gone by May”, he said.
That self-imposed deadline was looking unlikely to be achieved, and the council had set its own deadline of December 1, 2024.
In his report, the council’s planning consultant, John Cook, recommended the council grant consent for the variations applied for and introduce a list of conditions.
The report, which was sent to the developer just before Easter, lists 45 conditions which cover engineering, earthworks, stormwater, roading, and provisions for dealing with the large pile of dirt.
Cook said the council should be mindful of the “potential environmental effects that may arise due to the stockpile remaining in place for an extended period of time”.
He said due to there “apparently being no timeframe” for when Stage 2 work will commence, new conditions were required to “deal with this situation”.
“In respect of Lot 200, the sediment stockpile located largely within it shall be either: lowered to pre-development level … before the commencement of Stage 2 civil construction or December 2024, whichever is the earlier.
“… the consent holder shall lodge with the Timaru District Council the sum of $100,000 (GST inclusive) to ensure compliance with conditions … This money shall be retained in a bond account held and operated by the Timaru District Council.”
It says the council “retains the right to call on this bonded money should the required works … have not been undertaken by 1 December 2024’’.
“The council shall use this money for the undertaking of those uncompleted works.”
The report gives no other indication on when the second stage might happen, other than stating the “applicant company continues to advise of its desire to undertake the Stage 2 development when the ‘economic climate’ will be more conducive for a start to be made”.
Correspondence, supplied to The Timaru Herald by the council under the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act, shows the developer tried to negotiate a later deadline (for some time in 2025) for the stockpile to be removed, but the council refused the request.
The council also refused a request by the developer to remove the condition requiring a financial bond as security.
Email correspondence between Cook and those working for the developer showed the council also asked the developer to come up with a suitable financial figure for that bond.
“On the matter of the value of the ‘guarantor bond’, the TDC believes that you would have the required information on hand in order to arrive at a suitable bond value.”
In October, Timaru District Holdings Limited (TDHL) confirmed it had granted the developer an extension to settle on two of three remaining lots it has agreed to sell. Under the original agreement, the settlement date for Lots 8 and 9 was October 12, 2023.
TDHL sold 9.9ha of the 12ha site to the company in 2019 for $6.4 million.
In confirming an eight-and-a-half month extension, to June 30, 2024, TDHL general manager Frazer Munro said the holdings company could have cancelled the settlement on the two lots, but allowed an extension saying “we just want to see him finish it off”.