Southern man

South Island entrepreneur John Lee turned 70 this month but he’s still got plenty of money-making ideas. After inheriting his father’s high-country sheep station near Wanaka, Lee developed the Cardrona ski field and then created Waiorau Snow Farm — which is used for skiing, snowboarding and filming commercials, and where car makers and tyre companies test their products in the snow. He’s also a staunch defender of the ‘bra fence’, started six years ago by four Wanaka ladies on their way home from a night out at the Cardrona Hotel (which Lee also used to own). By Fiona Rotherham

Last year you sold the vehicle proving ground you started in 1984 to a group of Christchurch businessmen including George Gould. Why?
So we didn’t have problems with future generations. We bought the other partners out who had 45% of the business. So we sold the proving ground which enabled me to get rid of the debt we had and buy the partners out.

How much did you sell it for?
I had a clause of confidentiality but The Press at the time of the sale asked George Gould and he said $20 million-plus.

If I said $25 million, would that be right?
Yeah, pretty good. We hold the land and sold the buildings and the operations. We take 4% of the gross turnover in rental as part of the deal.

Your Little Bo Peep Sheep company owns the 2,600ha of freehold land on the snow farm. What else do you do up there?
Sam Lee, my 26-year-old son, runs the Snow Park — that’s his company. It is an all-terrain, mainly snowboarding park. He’s going to make that brand so good that no one will be offended coming on to do commercials because there’ll be no other brand there but Snow Park. Rip Curl and Billabong did commercials there last year plus several others. That’s a separate company we retained. That’s Sam's company. Mary, my wife, runs the cross-country skiing complex. Mary is doing quite a lot of summer activities — alpine plant walking groups and she runs a half-marathon in early January which has over a 100 runners in it.

You’ve also been planning with Dr John Hellemans of the NZ Academy of Sport to make your farm a formal high-altitude training base for Kiwi sports people.
We’re looking for a summer use for our accommodation. We have 18 triathletes at the moment. They live here and do some of their training here and go down and swim in Wanaka in the town swimming pool. Dr Hellemans is a specialist coach in altitude training — he’s really made it his forte — and brings his squad here.

What else?
My daughter Joanna is involved in the Cardrona Adventure Park with me and we’re leasing out the day-to-day running of that. And I’ve bought the 3,700ha pastoral lease for the Robrosa Station next door and we’re going through the tenure review process.

Tenure review aims to free up outdated High Country leases between the Crown and farmers. How does it work?
I made a submission to LINZ [Land Information New Zealand] to go for tenure review and it has accepted my application. There are people from DOC this week out looking at anything from lizards to fish to insects. Once DOC finishes that report it will be a fantastic document to have. If you put a bulldozer in somewhere you’re not going over something that could have unique qualities. Then DOC will work out what areas it wants and I’m working out what I want. We may — it is unlikely, but we may — agree on that first round but most likely we will not, and we then have to go into negotiation to see if we can find a compromise. The big battle that is going to come there is public recreation versus a commercial operator.

Some oppose development on land above 1,200m, but you’re still forging ahead?
We’re talking — talking is the operative word — about putting a gondola in from the valley floor up to the Snow Park. If we do that, then we’ll do more accommodation and we’ll put in two chairlifts down over the back just for more open-field ordinary skiing type things.

You have also applied for resource consent for a second lodge?
It’s on hold as we’ve got too much else on at the moment. Down at the Snow Park, Sam’s company is building a new restaurant and it has got about 90 bunk beds above it, and he has resource consent to put in 28 quite upmarket apartments in the snowboard area so people that stay there can just ski or snowboard out in the morning. That’s got us a bit bogged down; the consents have been slower than we would have liked. We’d also like to expand our cross-country and if we put the gondola in we’d like to do mountain biking trails like they do in Whistler from the top of the gondola down various trails.

What made you turn to tourism?
President Kennedy back in the 60s said the farmer is “the only person who buys retail, sells wholesale and pays for cartage both ways”. The more you look at that, the poorer it is as an economic recipe. Here we have about a $3 add-on to New Zealand for every dollar we get. Mercedes let us see its figures — it spent $830,000 in New Zealand and we got, through the proving ground, $212,000 [of that]. That means the 400ha up here is producing probably $30 million for New Zealand. If it was still being farmed under fine wool, as I used to do, I would have an income of $20,000 off it — it’s a bit of a difference. And if it went into DOC, which a lot would like it to, it would cost New Zealand administrative-wise about $20,000 a year. So I keep saying this is the choice and it is what the battle is over next door.

How hard is getting consent approval?
We have a consent hearing this month on the building of another restaurant and coffee shop and administration building for the adventure park. I have three people against it. They object to most things, so we’re not unique in that respect, but I seem to be a favourite of theirs. The Resource Management Act is really killing off development in the rural areas. It is so difficult unless you’ve got a fair bankroll. I’ve been lucky; I was early enough. Roger Douglas knocked the bureaucrats out in 1984 and I sort of came in after that. But the bureaucrats have recovered and gained strength since then — sadly for New Zealand’s rural economy.

You’ve also come under flak because of the bra fence on your property.
I’ve done over a 100 media interviews on the bra fence. It’s really put Cardrona on the map.

Does it need resource consent?
That’s one legal opinion that the Queenstown/Lakes District Council got. You won’t get many of them to say it on the record but some other legal guys question it. I’m not going to the expense of the High Court to sort it.

What do you think the council will do?
They’re not so much against the bra fence but they wish the time they had to spend on it would go away. We’ll try to tidy it up in the next couple of weeks but it is a laugh and we don’t laugh enough. To me it represents change and I find New Zealand is not changing fast enough to keep up with the other economies of the world.

In what way do you see 800 bras on a fence representing change?
It shocks some people and that gets them to think. It is not political correctness, if you like. I’m 70 and women around the world are sending me bras with their phone numbers on.

What does Mary say about that?
Oh, she just laughs. She allows an old man to have his wee bit of fun.