$18m city hotel hit by delays

Work on the $18 million Novotel Hotel in downtown Tauranga will start early next year despite the developer hitting resource consent delays.
Ray Cook, managing director of Rotorua-based R&B; Consultants, had planned to have work on the former TV3 site opposite Baycourt in Durham St under way by now.
But he was told by Tauranga City Council that he had not allowed enough car parks, forcing him to redesign the seven-storey building to include another level of parking.
The long-awaited hotel and conference development, close to the Kingsview Resort which is being built, was also hit with $500,000 worth of impact fees.
Mr Cook is developing the Novotel in partnership with the world's largest hotel group, Paris-based Accor. He is about to submit a new application, taking the number of car parks from 60 to about 120.
"It's been frustrating. We would like to have been on the site now and hopefully it will be January," Mr Cook said.
He is overseeing the completion of the 145-room Ibis Hotel in Rotorua.
He was confident the Tauranga Novotel would still be open for business by the end of next year.
Visitors to the city will then have the choice of four hotels: Novotel, the established Hotel Armitage, the newly-opened Hotel on Devonport and the 4 1/2-star Trinity Wharf, being built in Dive Crescent.
When completed, Novotel will have 120 rooms, a restaurant and bar, gymnasium and conference facilities for about 300 people.
The building would take up 2500sq m of the Durham St block between Spring St and Wharf St, and the Accor/R&B; Consultants partnership had an option to develop a budget Ibis Hotel or managed apartments on the rest of the site.
Mr Cook was surprised to learn the council was charging the Novotel project just over $500,000 in development fees, following the big increase on July 1.
"It's been an issue," he said. "The fees were a lot more than we anticipated but we are pretty committed to building the hotel and it will still work. It just adds to the development costs, there's a longer payback period and I guess that's part of doing business."
Mr Cook, who also built the 200-room Novotel in Rotorua, said the fees were "totally out of whack" to other areas. "For some reason they are exorbitantly high in Tauranga and I hope development in the city is not hamstrung.
"You'd think it would have an impact - and if the council is trying to encourage development in the city then it might need to reconsider the fees."
Mr Cook said the development levy for building the Ibis Hotel in Rotorua was $60,000.
In July another developer canned plans for a five-star, 24-unit motor inn at Pyes Pa after discovering impact fees would total nearly $300,000.
Terry Wynyard, the council's group manager environmental services, said the development scene was still active despite the increase in fees.
"To those who predicted the increase would kill development, it is simply not the case - the figures show that.
"We had a huge month in June and now consent applications are back to normal," he said.
The rush to beat the July 1 increase resulted in 558 building consent applications in June compared with 287 for the same month last year. The estimated value of the proposed work was $146.44 million compared with $41.44 million in June 2003.
The latest figures show building consents were running below last year but above the number in 2002.