Residents win rights to manage park

 

BY JULIA WADE

Following the recent management breakdown of a long-running holiday park, a happy ending is at hand with the park tenants now in control. 

Residents of Mangawhai Holiday Park on Moir Street have been in a ‘jubilant mood’ since securing the management rights to the complex in late August. 

Carolyn Dymock – Park resident for two years and treasurer of the Park’s society EUO – says she is delighted. 
“The society, through its committee, has been running the park for most of the past year and now, by raising sufficient funds among ourselves to put in the winning bid we’ll be officially in charge!” she says. 

“The whole park had a meeting and BBQ in the gazebo and pool area on September 8 to celebrate. We also had a practice celebration on September 3 when we found out we had won the rights so we are getting quite good at it.”

Former managers of the Park, Mangawhai Management Ltd (MML) were registered in 2008 to administer the holiday grounds but was placed into liquidation on June 8 this year by the High Court. 

The management rights were put up for public tender in July (Focus, August 6).

“A series of events began more than a year ago when MML raised our levies by an amount far in excess of an agreed ten percent annual increase,” Dymock says. 

“Our society asked for an analysis of the rise and when that wasn’t supplied, we capped our contributions to 60 per cent of the previous year’s levy. This led to MML claiming they had insufficient funds to manage the park and were unable to pay the managers. In turn, the managers took legal action which led to the court ruling.”

Sites at the Park are owned independently by the residents who also each hold a share in the land and, for many, the grounds have also been a fulltime home for more than ten years. 

“We were faced with the risk of someone else buying the rights and upping the levies yet again or buying the management rights ourselves,” Dymock says. 

“The sale went through on Friday September 14… it’s a great win for us.” 

Change is in the air. Mangawhai Holiday Park residents gather by their pool – ‘a victim of the Park's troubled past year’. However new plans are in place for ‘a summer recommissioning’ Park resident Carolyn Dymock says.