M&C Saatchi Australian boss and former worldwide chairman Tom Dery fears an 89-lot housing development overlooking the Shotover River will degrade an iconic Kiwi landscape, according to reports in the Otago Daily Times and the NZ Herald.
Dery, who has a luxury Arthurs Point holiday home, was responsible for Tourism New Zealand’s world-renowned 100% Pure NZ campaign.
Renowned – and now also highly successful. Foreign investors are now flocking to the tourist town, triggering a building boom – and a comment at the weekend from RNZ’s Jim Mora that there was “a certain irony” that an Aussie adman who made so much money out of Pure NZ should find that it’s come back to bite him on the bum (our phraseology, not his).
Dery is chairman of the Arthurs Point Outstanding Natural Landscape Society that’s been formed to try to stop the development.
“The pressure of development is making the protection and preservation of these iconic views more and more important,” he told the media.
50% Pure NZ, 50% suburb?
“If this property development goes ahead, it will take one of the great tourism images sold to the world as ‘100% Pure’ and turn it into ‘50% Pure NZ, 50% suburb’.
“Somebody’s going to look back some time in the future and say, ‘how did this happen?”‘
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