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Hanmer Springs, according to numerous observers (e.g., Ensor, 1983; Gardner, 1983; Lovell-Smith, 2000), has grown as a provincial resort; not as a County or District township. In the early days of the township’s development, this growth was enabled largely by the strong support (often financial) given to Hanmer Springs as the Amuri County’s recreation centre. Many of the amenities in the township were developed initially by Amuri

initiatives and capital, with the Amuri County Council taking a leading role in each new phase of development. More recently, this mantle of support and responsibility has been taken by the Hurunui District Council (on behalf of the Hurunui District ratepayers), who have further developed the township and amenities therein. While the eras of the Amuri and Hurunui administrations are separated by time and by, arguably, institutional

capacity and entrepreneurial intent, they are nonetheless characterised by similar obstacles to progress and development.

Perhaps the greatest obstacle to the progress of Hanmer Springs was the longstanding three-way tension between government departments, Council and private developers. Departmental officials aimed to control and limit growth in the interests of their health and tourist services. The Council objected to large state reserves which produced noxious weeds but no rates, yet shared in County services. Developers wanted freer access in order to promote residential areas around a resort improved by state and County funds. By the mid-1960s, these disputes were being steadfastly defused. After a long period of ‘quiet consolidation’, Hanmer Springs was moving into a phase of something approaching

‘taking-off’ (Gardner, 1983: 467). Beyond the traditional attractions of the hot springs, the township and its surroundings were now seen to have great residential and recreational possibilities. Government, County, developers and residents did not need to compete for a limited resource; all could co-operate in an expanding and many-sided enterprise.

In February 1967, the Amuri County Council formally recognised that Hanmer Springs was ‘going ahead’, and that the County would have to take the initiative in planning. At this time, the thermal pools – the township’s raison d’être – were becoming a contentious issue. The public pool facilities were dilapidated and the Health Department wanted to be rid of an unwanted and uneconomic burden (Gardner, 1983: 468). In August 1969, a deputation of residents from Hanmer Springs asked the Amuri Council to take over the pools, thus setting in motion a very fruitful joint County–township campaign. However, a good deal of water flowed through the run-down pools before the Health Department and the Council reached agreement on the terms of the takeover. When efforts to hold government to a firm financial commitment failed, local residents showed their

determination and commitment by forming the Hanmer Springs Thermal Pool

Development Association in December 1970. By vigorous campaigning, the Association had in six years raised about $38,000. In turn, the Amuri Council was encouraged to raise a small loan of $80,000. This latter sum just bridged the ever-widening gap caused by inflation, which threatened to kill the whole project. Finally, on 2 September 1978, an entirely new complex of five outdoor pools was opened by E.G. Latter, Member of Parliament for Marlborough, who had been an effective advocate in the nation’s capital of Wellington. The final cost of the re-development was $281,000; a significant amount at that time. Besides the Association’s contribution, the Council had put up $128,000

(including $110,000 of loan money) and the government had provided $115,000 in subsidies.

The 1970s saw a round of strong development for Hanmer Springs. An environmental plan was commissioned by the Amuri County Council in 1972; the Hanmer State Forest Park was gazetted in 1977; before and after that date a pattern of walkways was extended through this 17,000 hectare Reserve. The Amuri Ski Club, which had been founded in 1956, equipped itself with modern tow facilities in 1977. New residential

streets and motels in contemporary architecture also helped smarten the township’s image and appearance.

There were major developments at the Hanmer Springs Thermal Reserve during the 1990s. Ownership of the Thermal Reserve was transferred to the Hurunui District Council in 1989 via the process of local government reforms, and a management committee established, initially on a trial basis. The result of this committee’s work was a further redevelopment of the thermal pools, which re-opened in 1992 and greatly increased the numbers of visitors to both the Hurunui District and Hanmer Springs. This programme of redevelopment has continued, with the addition of activity pools and waterslides in 1998 and the opening of a Vichy Day Spa and Beauty Treatment facility within the thermal reserve complex in 2006. Further expansions to the complex are planned for the near future, although the scale of this work will be subject to land availability in the adjacent Queen Mary Reserve.

The pools continue to be managed by the Hanmer Springs Thermal Reserves

Management Committee; which is a Reserves Committee within the Hurunui District Council. The thermal pools have gone from being an unprofitable operation and financial drain on Council resources during the early 1990s, to a being a lucrative source of

revenue for the Council in the present day. In fact, such has been the financial turn around of the Hanmer Springs Thermal Reserve that in the 2007-2008 Financial Year it delivered a net operating surplus of NZ$1.5 million to the Hurunui District Council (Garry Jackson, Mayor of Hurunui District, personal communication, August 6, 2008). A portion of the operating profits from the Thermal Reserve are made available for the

development of Reserves within the District’s five constituent municipal wards, thus ensuring that some of the financial benefits from tourism activity in Hanmer Springs are spread amongst the remainder of the District area.

The importance of Hanmer Springs, and of tourism generally, as a key ‘growth-pole’ for the Hurunui District has been further confirmed with the commissioning – by the Hurunui District Council – of the Hanmer Springs Development Plan (Hurunui District Council, 2003), followed by the release of the Hanmer Springs Growth and Management Strategy

and Town Centre Development Plan (Hurunui District Council, 2006a). Both of these documents have sought to provide a future vision for urban and rural growth in Hanmer Springs, and to help the community capitalise on the recent growth in visitation and economic activity in Hanmer Springs. This has been further complemented by the identification of tourism growth and development in Hanmer Springs as a key strategic area in the Hurunui District Council’s Long-Term Council Community Plan 2006 (a ten-year long-term planning document), thus signalling the anticipated role of tourism generally, and tourism in Hanmer Springs specifically, as a significant contributor towards broader development objectives within the Hurunui District area.

6.6

Conclusion

This chapter has provided an examination of the various contextual elements contained within the case study location of the Hurunui District, New Zealand. Arguably the most striking feature of the context provided in this chapter has been that the history of the District area has been punctuated by extended periods of change. That change has been in the form of political amalgamation, which has had the effect of imposing, at least initially, a contrived sense of District identity in the Hurunui District. The series of

territorial administrative amalgamations also lead to an incremental removal of the nexus of control from local communities to ever more distant (and alien) administrative capitals. It also served to demonstrate the power of central government to impose itself upon sub- national governance, from the regional level through to the local community level.

This chapter has also discussed that, although agriculture continues to be the single largest contributor to the Hurunui economy, recent times have seen an expansion in sunrise industries such as tourism. As a consequence of this growth, both Hanmer Springs and the Hurunui District are presently experiencing significant levels of tourist visitation. The Hanmer Springs Thermal Reserve is thus recognised as a key ‘anchor’ destination which has been a catalyst for significant business investment in the District (Hurunui District Council, 2006b: 14). In fact, the ongoing growth and development of sunrise industries in the Hurunui during the mid-2000s has been such that in 2006 the District was ranked as New Zealand’s third-fastest growing territorial authority economy. This is

out of a total of 74 territorial authorities in New Zealand (Business and Economic Research Limited, 2006).

Admittedly, this economic growth cannot be attributed solely to ongoing tourism development in the District. However, the emergence and subsequent growth of the tourism industry has acted to broaden the economic base of the Hurunui District and to complement the recent growth in the District’s primary sector. This is associated most notably with the growth of the Waipara Valley wine producing region and with the District’s strengthening dairy industry. In addition, the close proximity of the District’s southern settlements of Leithfield Beach and Amberley to Christchurch City (the South Island’s largest city and centre of commerce), and the relative ease of rural-urban commuting that such proximity affords, has also contributed to growth in urban development experienced presently in the Hurunui District.

As noted above, one of the key ‘anchor’ destinations of the Hurunui’s tourism product is the Hanmer Springs Thermal Reserve. This thermal reserve is operated as a Local

Authority Trading Enterprise (LATE) by the Hurunui District Council, which retains full ownership of the complex. This situation of public sector ownership of a significant tourism resource, while certainly not unique and without precedent, nonetheless presents an intriguing conundrum for the local authority insofar as the extent to which District-wide development objectives are able to accommodate local-level touristic ‘realities’ is often a highly contentious and vexatious issue. Indeed, this situation appears to have been ‘tested’ in recent times as large-scale redevelopment of the complex, as well as Council purchases of surrounding lands to accommodate this development, have raised the question of public sector enablement and management of tourism in the District.

This chapter has also explored the position of Hanmer Springs as the premier tourism destination in the Hurunui District. This position has been established largely through the presence of the thermal springs for which the town is named and known, and

development of the Hanmer Springs Thermal Pools and Spa. The development of the thermal pools, indeed the extraordinary development trajectory of Hanmer Springs itself,

is largely the result of significant public sector involvement. This involvement has been at the central and local government level, and has resulted in the township of Hanmer Springs becoming the flagship destination within the District area. Thus, while tourism in Hanmer Springs provides ongoing benefit to the wider District area, it nonetheless presents a destination context in which the primacy of development in Hanmer Springs might be interpreted by some as occurring at the expense of development in other parts of the District. It is this tension, along with the other issues noted in this section, which will thus be explored in the following chapters of this thesis.