A local developer’s bid for a new barn on his west Wānaka property has been opposed by local groups including the Guardians of Lake Wānaka and the Upper Clutha Environmental Society.

Beech Trustees Ltd has applied for resource consent for a 300m2+ barn within an Outstanding Natural Landscape (ONL) zoned, 32ha lakeside property owned by Allan Dippie. 

If approved, the eight-metre-tall barn would be located on a gentle slope overlooking Lake Wānaka.

It would be visible from a range of locations around the lake (as well as on it), including sections of Wānaka-Mt Aspiring Road, the Millenium Trail, the eastern side of Lake Wānaka, and others.

It will be down to an independent commissioner to determine whether or not the barn gets the go-ahead, with a hearing date now set for late August.

Queenstown Lakes District Council (QLDC) media and channels advisor Sam White told the Wānaka App there were various reasons the application was going to a hearing.

The application is a restricted discretionary activity, within the ONL, and it has attracted six opposing submissions, he said.

One of those submissions is from the Upper Clutha Environmental Society (UCES), which asks for the application to be denied in its entirety.

A woolshed was approved for the property in  2017 and “...the society can see no conceivable reason why another large farm building can be seen to be appropriate in this highly sensitive ONL location,” UCES president Julian Haworth said in his submission.

The barn would create “significant adverse visual effects,” he said.

Other submitters included two neighbouring landowners who said the barn would impede their views; a representative for three iwi groups which said the proposal was too large and too close to the lake; and the Guardians of Lake Wānaka, who said they would withdraw their opposition if concerns about runoff from the barn’s construction entering Lake Wānaka were appropriately remedied.

A landscape assessment for Beech Trustees Ltd completed by Baxter Design Group said proposed mitigation planting and mounding would screen part of the barn.

Where it will be visible from the eastern side of Lake Wānaka “it will be a very small part of a wider panorama” and from the surface of Lake Wānaka it will appear as “part of a cluster of farm buildings in a working rural landscape”. 

“The proposed barn will be clad in weathered corrugated iron, which will blend into the existing landscape and reinforce the rural character,” it said.

The hearing on the barn proposal will take place on August 27 at the Wānaka Community Hub.

IMAGE: Supplied