Organisers of the Bluff Oyster and Food Festival won’t be selling tickets to the iconic event in May 2024 until the Club Hotel is actually demolished.
Related: Bluff Club Hotel Demolition Approved, With Conditions
“Our view is the festival is not on until after the building is on the ground,” trust committee member Kylie Fowler said.
Independent commissioner Paula Costello granted resource consent to the trust on Friday last week, but the committee has since been told it would still need a building consent, and that would be unlikely heading into the Christmas period.
Kylie said then there was the issue of how much the actual demolition would cost, which would either be funded through an interest-free loan, or from private supporters if they had to.
“The reality is you would think the council would bend over backwards to help get this done. But after 13 years it is just getting so much harder with the red tape.”
The committee would also need to apply for a liquor licence in January, but before they could do that their site and fire plans would need to be updated with FENZ.
Kyle said the festival makes $70,000 a year but only when they hold one – and it has been awhile since that has been a reality.
Offers to corporatise the festival have been turned down in the past – Mayor Nobby Clark said he suggested bringing it into the ILT Stadium Southland 12 years ago, but the commitee declined.
Kylie said the committee was sticking to the original grass roots model of a festival, avoiding having VIP areas and allowing everyone to mix together.
“You could have a white guy from Ponsonby sitting there next to a local fisherman having a feed of kina and oysters, and that’s what it’s about,” she said.
The Club Hotel had a dangerous and insanitary building notice put on it by council in 2022, and was also on a Heritage New Zealand site, with a category 2 listed classification – the only building with that status in the town.
Mayor Clark said the council could’ve enforced the demolition of the building on that notice, but either way the trust would still have to pay.
“So now why should ratepayers pay to knock down the old building?” he said.
The trust has taken the next step and applied to NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi to have road controls on State Highway 1 in Bluff to allow for the demolition.
But the application could take at least 42 days because of the need to notify the public about road closures.
The conditions imposed by the commissioner for the demolition were similar to what the trust wanted, making the wider site available for use for a range of community uses.
The Demolition Management Plan must include a schedule of significant historical or archaeological features and historic building materials, identified by a suitably qualified heritage practitioner, that were able to be salvaged for reuse on the site or made available to the wider community.
It had been costing the trust $10,000 a year to keep the old hotel standing, and there was still an appeal period, of which the council had until January 12 to make a decision.
“We’ll know by the end of January what we’re doing,” Kylie said.