Luggate

Luggate, a small rural roadside township on the fringe of Queenstown-Lakes – just a 12 minute drive from Wanaka. Luggate flies under the radar, so much so, that the last long-term vision was carried out in 2003!!!

In this dated visioning report the pressing issue of the time was the lack of public phone booths.
This community liked the fact that Luggate didn’t attract tourists and they prided themselves on being an area for young families to build a home.

Back then, there was a total of 80 houses.

Currently, there’s now 230 houses in the Luggate area and QLDC plans allows for another 480!
We’re now over 20 years down the track and Luggate will not be amiss with the stroke of GROWTH that’s forecasted for the district.

There are some significant visioning plans near Luggate that will create significant impact.
Silverlight Studio is one of them.

50,000 square metre mega film park situated on the plains of the Wanaka-Luggate Highway.
It is said that they will have a sound stage 17 metres tall, model city skylines and a replica of New York’s Central Park.

The film development once complete will attract movie projects far and wide.
Creating 4134 jobs in its first year and between 1701 and 1995 jobs annually up until year 11.

The latest phase of resource consents signaled that hundreds of houses will be needed for accommodation. 300 accommodation units.

There are pro’s to this project of diversifying the economy and adding high value jobs to the region but Silverlight has been whisked through the governmental channels as a fasted-tracked project.

Meaning the community has had little say on how this film development might affect their residential dwelling.
Another major scale project is the Tarras Airport.

In 2020, a mystery man spent $45 million on 450ha of farmland in Tarras. He paid twice market value.
By July 2020 the cat was out of the bag, the vendor was Christchurch Airport and announced they were planning to build an international airport.

This was a shock to the unassuming sellers and the small rural community that lived there. Since there’s been a much-heated debate.

While Christchurch Airport still claims they are in their research phase of this, just last month, the last parcel of land needed to complete their plans was sold.

An international airport at the foot of Cromwell and Wanaka will greatly change the area. In our workshop session, it’s crucial we start to flesh out these major future projects.

Look at how constructing both of these sites might require worker accommodation, how it’ll add more people, and how this will affect the roads.

In 2002, the big issue was public phone booths. Luggate we have much to talk about this long-term visioning workshop.