Council backtracks on decision to reject mobile sauna location

A decision to reject a mobile sauna at Shelly Beach in Picton will "lie on the table" as a potential option, after the deputy mayor admitted he went away and did some homework.

The mobile sauna first parked up in Picton in July, when it opened with a "soft launch", but by August it had to close as it did not have consent.

A Marlborough District Council committee in October rejected a proposal to allow the mobile sauna to operate on Shelly Beach, next to the Queen Charlotte Yacht Club, from 4pm to 8pm, year round.

When full council went to sign-off that decision at a meeting last Thursday, deputy mayor David Croad suggested the council did not move to reject the idea.

Initially, councillors were told that the Victoria Domain Reserve Management Plan - which included Shelly Beach - did not allow for commercial activity.

Croad said he had since looked at reserve management plans "a heck of a lot closer", in particular the one for Victoria Domain.

He said he read the plan "cover to cover" and thought it was "more enabling" for commercial activity than the council was first led to believe.

"At the time, I made comment that maybe whilst we were working with the applicant, we should have left that paper lie on the table, and so that's my suggestion today," Croad said at the full council meeting.

He said he understood council staff had made contact with the sauna operator, and they had been investigating the Picton foreshore as an option, as the area had existing concessions. He thought this should continue.

Wairau-Awatere ward councillor Gerald Hope, who joked that he "loved the unexpected", said he was mindful that it could raise an expectation with the sauna operator that the Shelly Beach site was a "likely possibility".

"That's a concern to me," Hope said.

He asked for clarity around what Croad understood the plan allowed.

Croad said the governor of the reserve, being the council, were able to make a decision to enable an activity.

"That's step one and step two is the applicant has to go through a resource consent process."

That resource consent was most likely publicly notifiable, so the council would get community feedback on any proposal.

"If you think about the sauna in relation to the water and hot-and-cold, and the fact that they want to operate between 4pm and 8pm at night, it's about a complementary activity rather than a commercial activity that might duplicate something that's already in town," Croad said.

He said the council had been worried about setting a precedent, however, the "reality" was that commercial activity like food carts could be rejected because there were already food options in Picton.

"This activity is obviously new, it's quite entrepreneurial," he said.

"I've done a lot more homework, it exists in many other parts of the country, I think it's really interesting."

The full council therefore agreed to let the idea lie on the table instead of rejecting it.

The proposal that initially went to council said in order to operate, two car parking spaces would be needed.

A consent was needed because commercial activity on the site was not permitted under the rules of the Proposed Marlborough Environment Plan.

LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.