The construction of 69 residential units a stone’s throw from Lake Wānaka is set to begin soon.

The new units will be built on the 1.4ha site off Mt Aspiring Road formerly known as Roys Bay Estate which was sold in a mortgagee sale last year.

The sale followed many years of stalled development on the site.

Company Stoney Creek GCO Ltd was quick to snap up the property - which came with resource consent for a lifestyle retirement village with 73 units and communal facilities - and just before Christmas a variation to the resource consent was granted.

The site was sold in a mortgagee sale last year, around 17 years after the previous owners shared initial plans for a retirement village but failed to complete the project.

It allows the company to reduce the total number of units to 69; convert a clubhouse to a communal outdoor living area; and ditches the requirement for some of the units to be set aside for retirement village use only, instead allowing occupiers of all ages and work status for almost half the units.

When Stoney Creek GCO Ltd took ownership, the site had a partially formed roading network and services and the purchase excluded the handful of units completed by the previous developers. 

Those developers first came under fire when they sought consent to develop the site into a retirement village back in 2008, in an application that was denied by Queenstown Lakes District Council (QLDC) after residents campaigned against the proposal.

Roys Bay Estate eventually got the tick of approval for a 73-unit retirement village from the Environment Court in 2012 after a mediation process with approximately 120 affected residents.

But the company later opted out of the Retirement Village Act and made numerous variations to its consent, to the anger of some neighbouring residents and the dissatisfaction of those who had made deposits securing future homes in the lifestyle retirement village.

By 2021, the site was up for sale.

Dave Evans, who lives on nearby Kelliher Drive, has been keeping tabs on the development’s progress for many years, and said he has been disappointed to see many resource consent variations approved without public notification.

He was disappointed to see this happen yet again.

The new resource consent allows the developers to build something “far less in keeping with the surrounding area, and of a bulk and density totally at odds with the neighbouring areas,” Dave said.

It was “nothing even close” to the retirement village that was promised many years ago, he said.

Stoney Creek Estate is currently being advertised by First National Real Estate Wānaka, with two and three-bedroom units priced from $1.49M.

PHOTOS: Wānaka App