Council wins Pakiri Beach battle

In the latest twist in a long-running legal saga over a Pakiri Beach development site, the Court of Appeal has ruled Rodney District Council can keep a $1.6 million cash bond that the developers wanted back.

The court ruled the council could keep the money despite persistent attempts by developers Kim Spencer and his associate, Richard Kroon, to have it replaced by a trading bank guarantee.

Kroon developed the award-winning Chancery boutique shopping centre in Auckland's CBD and Spencer is the developer who was kidnapped and assaulted on November 16 while showing the Pakiri land to a potential buyer.

The Spencer and Kroon companies involved in the case are Fisherton and Anzani Pakiri.

The Court of Appeal decision is a second blow for Spencer and Kroon after Westpac and Auckland Finance last month put Fisherton and Anzani Pakiri into receivership for not paying debts.

In the latest decision, Justice Susan Glazebrook, Justice Grant Hammond and Justice Bruce Robertson in the Court of Appeal overturned a decision made by Justice Geoffrey Venning in the High Court on June 28 last year.

In January last year, the Environment Court refused an application from the developers relating to the bond which is security for maintenance of new vegetation on the Arrigato property at Pakiri Beach, 25km east of Warkworth.

The developers had said the land was being sold, so the terms of an original resource consent should be changed from a cash bond to a trading bank guarantee. This would give them more financial flexibility.

But the council opposed that application.

After Judge Laurence Newhook refused the developers' requests in the Environment Court, they went to the High Court.

The High Court allowed the bond to be substituted or replaced with a bank guarantee - so the council went to the Court of Appeal.

The seaside block of land on M. Greenwood Rd has been at the centre of controversy since 1995, when developer Ian Gillespie and his Arrigato Investments bought the property and sought to subdivide it into 16 lifestyle blocks.

The district council refused to allow the development, so Gillespie appealed to the Environment Court, which allowed it.

But the Auckland Regional Council, which also opposed the scheme, sought a judicial review in the High Court, which it won.

By about 2000, the Court of Appeal had overturned that decision, sending it back to the Environment Court.

In the midst of these proceedings, Gillespie sold the land to Susan Hamilton and Kim Spencer and his Kitchener Homes. It was later sold to the companies Fisherton and Anzani Pakiri.

The site is next to the "Tuaman block" - the land at the centre of an ownership dispute between boxer David Tua and his managers.

Latest blow

* Court of Appeal has overturned a High Court ruling that two companies owned by developers Kim Spencer and Richard Kroon could recover a $1.6 million cash bond.

* The bond is held by the Rodney District Council for maintaining vegetation on a development site at Pakiri, 25km east of Warkworth.

* This is the second blow for the companies, Fisherton and Anzani Pakiri - they went into receivership last month.