Time to clear icepak ‘eyesore’
A Tamahere woman is asking for support to have the former Icepak Coolstore site cleared of its scars.
She is among other residents in the rural Waikato community still haunted by the memory of the fatal coolstore fire a decade ago.
Jo Wilde said it’s time the site was developed into something which could help people find some resolution.
What remained of the facility was merely the concrete pads the structures stood on but it was still enough to fuel public recollection of the blaze on April 5, 2008, which claimed the life of firefighter Derek Lovell and seriously injured seven others.
‘‘It’s going to take money to get rid of this concrete, money for the pollution, so why don’t the council just let them [a developer] build the houses to get rid of this obscenity?’’ Wilde said.
The fire occurred due to a leak of a highly flammable gas that was not usually used in the industrial context.
It was described as one of the worst industrial fires in the country’s history.
The site, near to Tamahere Model Country School, had been empty and desolate since the disaster occurred.
The former Icepak boss Wayne Grattan bought the land on June 17, 2016.
Grattan Investments Ltd made an application to the Waikato District Council a year later to subdivide the area into six lots.
The council’s consents manager Ana Maria d’Aubert said the application was then heard by an independent commissioner on December 12, 2017.
The decision to decline the application was released in January, in which Grattan was told if the company had requested four lots to be subdivided on the site, the application would had been accepted.
Grattan was appealing the decision to the Environment Court, further prolonging the time until the land could be rid of the scars left by the coolstore fire.
‘‘I think it’s so disrespectful to the professional people that came to save the coolstore, firefighter Derek Lovell who was killed, and the other people who got seriously injured,’’ Wilde said.
She reported that skateboarders have been using the concrete pads.
When she visited the site on April 28, six cars were parallel parked on the site and appeared to belong to those who were skateboarding there.
‘‘I just don’t know what to do, but I just feel it’s absolutely dis- gusting and disrespectful,’’ Wilde said. Wilde recalled the day of the fire, when she had to help move an elderly couple from their home next to the blazing coolstore.
‘‘I want a public space, I’ve always wanted that,’’ she said.
‘‘So really you’ve got all this conflict but nobody is going to stand up and say if we’re going to do something about it.’’
Halls Group, which purchased Icepak and the Tamahere site in February 2016, sold the land to Grattan Investments Ltd that year, and said they hoped it would help to provide resolution to traumatised residents.
‘‘We felt it was good to sell the land and hopefully bring some of the community some peace,’’ chief financial officer Brendon said at the time.
The land was then rezoned to the lifestyle category under the Waikato District Council’s District Plan.