Mr Hall says the intersection and site access to and from his industrial yard since the realignment – and as they are proposed to operate when the traffic lights are turned on – will be unsafe.
### ODT Online Fri, 25 May 2012
Big costs sought over highway realignment
By Debbie Porteous
A Dunedin businessman is seeking significant costs from the Dunedin City Council after a protracted legal dispute over a highway realignment near Forsyth Barr Stadium. Doug Hall’s lawyer, John Farrow, yesterday confirmed a submission on costs was filed this week on behalf of Mr Hall’s company, Anzide Properties Ltd, to the High Court at Dunedin. Mr Hall and Mr Farrow declined to say how much was being sought in costs, but it is understood to be several hundred thousand dollars.
Read more
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Related Posts and Comments:
19.4.12 DCC comments ahead of court action, why?
23.8.11 Stadium project tangles
21.7.10 SH88 realignment – update
7.7.10 Goodbye to great store buildings in Parry St
29.5.10 Stadium site purchases
21.4.10 SH88 realignment – update
31.3.2010 SH88 realignment
24.2.10 SH88 realignment: Are ratepayers buying the land twice?
20.11.09 Interesting. SH88 realignment.
2.9.09 SH88 realignment past stadium
27.8.09 $294.8m investment for Otago region
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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr
What if? Dunedin... 
Note that the costs only relate to the injunction. They haven’t got started on related matters yet. It’s worth pointing out that the future costs that the DCC is now committed to are:
– redesignation of the SH88 alignment south of the bridge
– consultation, submissions process and hearings
– purchase of affected land
It’s my belief that there is no way for DCC to avoid purchasing the land and that they must do so at market rates. Which have been conveniently set by their purchase of other land, in the same area, for the same purpose. Anyone with a calculator can work out the per square metre cost, multiply that by the land area involved and come up with a round figure (which will make your eyes water). Add a couple of million for the redesignation and hearings. Note that this will also bring in Mobil for the service station on the opposite side of Anzac. Oh, and add the cost of a 100 year old elm tree, as one of the senior Managers says he needs a new one.
Had a quick look at council rates information. Anzide Properties Ltd pays rates on 76 and 80 Anzac Avenue (0.3306 ha and 0.2266 ha respectively). However, neither the rates information or the (now historical) DCC webmap is detailed enough to explain ownership of the adjoining land functioning as an extended truck yard (looks to be Anzide) to what is now Ravensbourne Rd. Before accounting for this additional land area, Anzide holds 0.5572 ha. A council, or rather its staff, designating for a highway realignment should have done exemplary cost projections for ‘how not to leave out’ all affected parties or shaft them. In consequence, expensive is the word. And I think, not allowed for in the annual plan or LTP ? Hmmm. Dear Councillors, you might want to check what your ‘council’ is doing and revise your budgets FAST.
“Council staff have previously said the second designation will not result in the intersection or highway realignment being changed, but will provide the framework for any talks over land purchases that follow.”
So Hall is nailing us for costs, then we’ll buy the land off him once we’ve filled the bucket with money again. When did the wood merchant move out and Hall move in. After the works had started or before????
{Moderated. -Eds}
Doug Hall is “nailing us”? His company’s record?
Doug Hall asks to be treated according to correct procedure. He would be a fool if he were to say “Oh, you poor things, here, take my land, inconvenience my business – it’s all for the good of the Stadium and the finances of the DCC which is in the crapper because of all the stupid decisions such as paying well over the odds for other people’s land.” I don’t care how many kinds of bastard Doug Hall is, I support him 100% on this.
Mr Hall just wants his turn at the trough like the other land owners who sold their land to the DCC in order to build a fiscally inept stadium, I think they were paid $34 million ? Do you think the ODT will investigate and find out who these clever and lucky landowers were for us?
Consider the scenario where Mr Hall was offered a price by council to purchase his land, which he could refuse. He says, “go away and sharpen your pencils, come back at a price per square metre that you paid for the stadium land and we might do business”. Council chose to eyeball Mr Hall to see if he would blink. Big mistake. Guess who might end up blinking all the egg off their faces?
The redesignation is set to occur because DCC didn’t play by the planning rules, big time. The council has admitted it didn’t treat Doug Hall as an affected party. There is no way any of us have to stand by and allow this council off the hook whether or not we personally like the commercial property owner. Any property owner treated in this way has the full weight of the law of the land behind them, to pursue their rights. Otherwise, you’re saying you want to live in a lawless country.
Besides, DCC and parties have more to confess. And, there are most certainly more affected parties.
Pretty shitty article, even by The Sun’s low standards. Now Doug Hall is the bad guy and the DCC (and, by default, the ratepayers) are the agrieved party. Bullying tactics by the local rag who are happy to make their own straws when there are none left to grasp at.
Mr wirehunt, and Ms Amanda, you are ill-informed. The land was owned by Anzide and operated by Hall Bros for several years before the realignment was even dreamed up. The landowner has the absolute right to expect the local territorial authority to follow the designation rules. As do you or I. And they have the right to expect costs for any legal proceedings where the LTA has been found (as it has here, quite clearly) to have breached those rules. The Public Works Act includes for the purchase scenario through compulsory purchase order at market rates. The law of the land permits neither for the LTA to bankrupt a landowner, nor purchase their land for beans, nor does it allow for the landowner to gouge the LTA. The LTA in this case has demonstrably acted outwith the rules, has set market rates through their ill-managed negotiations with other parties and has attempted in every manner to go around the need to designate. The rod has been made for their own back and the anger should rightly be directed towards those staff named in the article.
Interestingly enough my first ever submission to the Council was in 2007. The submitter immediately before me was also speaking against the Stadium along with a couple of other issues. He gave Guest a thorough slapping around in response to that particular gent’s characteristic ignorant rudeness. The submitter was peculiarly well informed on matters structural and had a very good knowledge of the nature of the land around and under the Stadium, which he put to good use in not taking any s**t from the defrocked gent. By doing so I hardly think that he made any friends within the chamber. The name of that submitter……Well, it looks like he’s still not taking any s**t doesn’t it?
The progress of the SH88 reroute is an interesting one. Some of you may remember that in the earliest renderings of the Stadium, the rerouted SH88 was actually shown going tight over the top of the rail corridor. When this got picked up, the new story was that it would run alongside the rail corridor, and that no land along Parry St would need to be purchased on the south side of the Leith. I can remember standing in front of the full Otago Regional Council with a measured photograph showing that the gap was only 14 feet wide. It made no difference – they chose to believe the no land/building purchase story. When the fact that the old flyover was in the way came up, the Gyratory was dreamed up. When the Gyratory bit the financial dust, the smooth right hand turn into Frederick Street and the upgrading of this innocent suburban road to state highway status came to the fore. When even that money ran out, Hall got stiffed and the State Highway 88 turned right, all right, but about fifty feet too soon. Entering Frederick Street now involves a lethal right left right shimmy – difficult in a 70 foot semi combo, so the Frederick Street State Highway went the same way as all the other excuses, and we are left with the State Highway reroute revealed for what it really is, a road from nowhere to nowhere around the back of the Stadium. Even the integration of the Plaza into the Logan Park/campus area has not been achieved, and this is about the only upside of this current dog’s back leg of a road. I would like to see the argument that proves that it is safer or even as safe as the original SH88 route, for cars cyclists and pedestrians.
(I have remarked several times on the nature of SH88 having more curves than the original.)
I thought I was getting cynical when the University of Otago purchased the ground behind Station Apartments just past the railway crossing for use as a car park some years ago. “Oh yes”, I thought. “That’s just land speculation because they know that the SH88 realignment will come through the rail corridor to link up with Thomas Burns St and go straight through to Andy Bay Road”.
I was somewhat gobsmacked when the plans came out and SH88 didn’t realign in that logical direction. Massive opportunity cost in the loss of the effectiveness of the transportation corridor from north end to south end.
It has more curves than a Marilyn Monroe look-a-like competition.
http://dunedin-amenities-society.org.nz/2012/05/24/edmund-anscombe-and-the-anzac-avenue-trees/
With your discussion of the alignment I hope you’ll also take the time to read the article above on the Anzac Avenue trees. The alignment construction looks as though it has severely affected a critical area of the city’s landscape heritage which is linked to the work of prominent architect Edmund Anscombe.
### ODT Online Wed, 1 Aug 2012
Notification could cause changes
By Debbie Porteous
The public notification of the realignment of State Highway 88 near Anzac Ave in Dunedin could result in minor changes to the road’s layout, Dunedin City Council staff say. The realignment will have been in place for more than a year before the intention to designate land for it is publicly notified later this year. Council transportation operations manager Graeme Hamilton said he could not say when it would be notified, but expected the public hearings that followed would be completed before the end of the year. A decision would follow that.
Read more
Given that they are going to bowl an entire line of large and presently healthy trees that gives Logan Park a good deal of its appeal and structure merely to please professional cricket, I think that it’s unlikely that they will care too much about these two. With regard to Logan Park I personally don’t believe a word of the ‘past their best’ argument. It’s always trotted out when large trees get in the way. Perhaps we will find the Mayor spuddling around among these inconvenient roots at dead of night sometime in the near future for the purpose of ‘tidying’ them – Crazy? It’s already happened in Eionland if you recall. Alternatively, it could be a councillor crawling around trying to find that half-finished bottle of scotch that was left behind when he parked his car there when he was last feeling tired and emotional – Now that might be a bit more plausible as a cover story.
Is this story one-sided or what? The previous council under Harland and Chin pushed through a change it was not permitted to do. It failed. They know they failed and they know they’re up that stadium creek without a budget.
Now it is reported they’ve spent $300K on “extensive” attempts to resolve the matter with Mr Hall and failed at that too. The council is full of out-of-control managers and a chief executive officer who seems vacant in these matters.
This time the council will lose and every day they try to screw over a ratepayer with the threat of legal action, they push themselves a little closer to government intervention.
http://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/211699/300000-spent-dispute
ODT has allowed if not encouraged the inference in this story that Mr Hall is somehow the despicable scab on the DCC wart. The council’s new communications unit appears to be working overtime to present Mr Avery in a certain ‘responsible’ guise (if not laced with acid); this is abetted by ODT’s failure to examine all the relevant issues surrounding the injunction which legally and properly upholds Mr Hall’s private property rights. Where’s the journalistic balance? Completely missing.
Sat, 02/06/2012 – 9:23am. farsighted Costs
http://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/211699/300000-spent-dispute#comment-30699
The $300K is internal costs for the department relating to its own improper handling of the designation and their botched attempts to rectify the situation. These costs would not have occurred if the process had been correctly designated. {continues}