Residents fight hotel project

NOT HERE: Koutu resident Natalie Richards, with son Steven, is continuing her fight against a proposed hotel development on a residential-zoned site on Bennett's Rd. PHOTO/FILE

Koutu residents protesting against the building of a hotel in their neighbourhood have met with developers, but say their fight to stop the proposed project is far from over.

Plans were unveiled in September last year for a new multimillion-dollar, four-star hotel on residential-zoned land on Bennett's Rd, which developers said would bring about 30 jobs and attract tourists.

It would have 100 rooms and include a swimming pool, restaurant and tennis courts.

The project is being jointly developed by Rotorua couple Alex Leu and Selina Zhang with two other investors - one based in Auckland and one in China.

Koutu resident Natalie Richards mobilised residents of the suburb, with the Rotorua Lakes Council last year receiving 123 submissions against the development and one in support.

The council put a temporary hold on the resource consent application after requesting more information from the developers.

Ms Richards said concerned residents met with developers and their Rotorua-based agents at Third Place Cafe on Thursday night.

"It was a really good meeting, they gave us some background about who they were and how shocked they were about how many objections there were," said Ms Richards. "They had no idea it would be so strongly opposed."

She said Koutu residents of all ages and ethnicities attended the meeting to let the developers know of their concerns, which included a hotel being built on residential-zoned land, increased traffic, ongoing construction work, past contamination of the site, noise, and the impact it would have on existing services such as sewers and stormwater.

"Because of the submissions, they have now had to commission more reports to satisfy questions and concerns that people have," she said. "But that's something they should have done at the start. We left them with no doubt that this community does not want that hotel among our residences, and moved a motion at the end to have it recorded that the participants of this consultation hui do not support the project - we reject in its entirety."

When contacted by the Rotorua Daily Post yesterday the developers did not want to comment, saying only that they would wait until after the resource consent process had been completed.

But according to the council's consent solutions manager Paul Spurdle, no further progress had been made on the consent, no date for a hearing had been set and the application was still on hold.