23 November 2004

V8 street race consent declined

The resource consent for the V8 supercar street race in Auckland has been declined.

The decision of the three independent planning commissioners was received this morning by City Planning and subsequently delivered to the applicants, event management company IMG and the Auckland City Council.

The commissioners (D McGregor, chair, G G Macfarlane, and R S Gee) acted for Auckland City Council in its regulatory function. As a result, their decision becomes the decision of the council. The council will not appeal to the Environment Court.

Appeals to the Environment Court by any other party with legitimate grounds can be made within 15 working days of receiving the decision.

The applicants sought consent to run the event each year for at least seven years from April 2006.

The commissioners declined the application citing their concerns over whether traffic could be suppressed sufficiently, noise and amenity effects. The commissioners presided over six days of hearings in July and August and three in November.

A full copy of their decision is attached.

Auckland City’s Mayor, Dick Hubbard, said today the consent application was one of the most in-depth pieces of professional work ever carried out by the city for a temporary event. Some 393 had made submissions to the commissioners, 248 (63 per cent) of these in favour of the event.

“However, the work obviously hasn’t overcome all the doubts raised with the commissioners. We must accept that,” Mr Hubbard said. “We must also ensure that this decision doesn’t stop Auckland bidding in future for such outstanding international events. They are rare. We are right as a city and a region to try to secure them when the opportunity comes along. We’ve learned a lot from this process. The very fact that we tried tells the events industry world wide that the city is as serious as they are.“ Mr Hubbard said the applicants had employed some of New Zealand’s best traffic engineers and the world’s best V8 track designers to work on the project.

“I thank them for the massive effort they have put in.”

ENDS

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