Maori hapu to buy Mobil site in Chapel St

Tauranga hapu Ngai Tamarawaho is negotiating to buy council-owned Chapel St property leased to Mobil. Photo.file

A $3.6 million council-owned harbourside property in Chapel St leased to Mobil is to be sold to Maori sub-tribe Ngai Tamarawaho.

The council has decided to sell the property on terms to be agreed with the Judea-based hapu. The parameters of the sale agreement were still confidential.

Final agreement also depended on obtaining consent from the Minister of Conservation and leaseholder Mobil Oil. The council would retain enough land to build a walkway skirting the estuary.

Councillor Larry Baldock took centre stage in the debate at this week's council meeting, saying the final price was not the issue - it was the promise given by the council in 2006.

Hapu representative Buddy Mikaere congratulated the council for having the courage to put the issue on the table and dealing with it. "We are finally on the way to getting this resolved."

The Mobil site was in exchange for another nearby block of land that the hapu expected to receive from the Crown as part of its Treaty settlement package, but which ended up being acquired by the council for construction of the second Harbour Bridge.

A report to the meeting said Ngai Tamarawaho consented to the Office of Treaty Settlements releasing the land at 80 Dive Cres to the council. Two years later in 2007, the land was sold back to the Crown, and the New Zealand Transport Agency completed works on the Harbour Crossing.

In 2006, the Mobil property was identified by the council and the hapu as a replacement for 80 Dive Cres in the landbank administered by the Office of Treaty Settlements. Five years later, the Office said it was not in a position to purchase properties from the council, and the council should deal directly with the hapu.

Since then, the council has been in discussion with Ngai Tamarawaho, with a proposal put to the council in 2012 and revised in 2015 and 2017.

A 2015 report from Mr Mikaere said the hapu had been treated shabbily in respect of two properties removed from the Treaty settlement land bank because they were required by the council. The other property was at the southern end of The Strand extension which it needed for the Southern Pipeline harbour crossing to Matapihi.

The report, obtained by an Official Information Act request, quoted Mr Mikaere as saying that these matters needed to be factored into the purchase price for the Chapel St property through a discounted price of $1m. Payment would be made by the hapu using Mobil's lease which in 2015 was $150,000 a year.

Mr Baldock told the meeting there would be no bridge, no Takitimu Drive and no Route J (the motorway from 15th Ave to Bethlehem) without the generous co-operation of Ngai Tamarawaho.

He said the Mobil site had cost the council nothing - it was given to the council in the restructuring that abolished harbour boards.

"Here they are today offering to buy it; it is an amazing offer."

Mr Baldock indicated the 2006 promise had been a verbal promise.

Councillor Leanne Brown said there was no sweetheart deal with the hapu and the council was only honouring a promise.

Councillor Terry Molloy said people needed to know that the council could provide honourable solutions. "If we can't, it diminishes us."

Councillor Gail McIntosh said the council needed to negotiate something it could live with and then move on.

Mr Mikaere, who attended the meeting, said the issue started when the hapu gave up its entitlement to the Dive Cres property followed by the land for the pipeline.

He noted that next month was the 30th anniversary of the occupation of the council's former Town Hall site that saw members of Ngai Tamarawaho jailed for standing up for what they believed was their land.

Forty years earlier, his grandfather and others took a petition to Parliament seeking the return of lands taken by raupatu - confiscations following the Battle of Gate Pa.