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The Pegasus Resort and 18-hole championship golf club in North Canterbury. Photo / File

John MacDonald: A council buying a golf course? Really?

Author: John MacDonald,
Publish Date: Wed, 3 Jun 2026, 9:16am

What planet is the Waimakariri District Council on even entertaining the idea of spending public money to buy the golf course at Pegasus?

You’ll know the story behind this. People living in the area, north of Christchurch, are very upset that a large property development company has bought the land where the golf course is and wants to turn it into housing.

The company - Wolfbrook Property Group - bought the land after the golf club at Pegasus went under. And it plans to try and use the government’s fast track legislation to get things happening sooner rather than later.

Like hell, say the Pegasus residents. Who include former cricketing great, Sir Richard Hadlee.

He was at this public meeting last night where the Waimakariri mayor Dan Gordon announced his hair-brained idea the of the council going to Wolfbrook and offering to buy the golf course land back off them.

Which, of course, is exactly the sort of thing the hundreds of people at the meeting last night wanted to hear. But it’s bonkers.

But here's what mayor Dan Gordon said last night: "We have agreed to test whether purchasing the golf course for the benefit of the community could be possible with other partners.

"We've got the support of the council today to explore this, to see if we can protect this asset for the community and safeguard it for its future."

Which is the sort of thing any politician likes to say in front of 400 people. Especially when they all start cheering and clapping.

But, when you take away the emotion of it all, this idea just doesn’t stack up.

Because let’s say the council did buy the land, it would then be on the hook for maintaining it as a golf course.

Remember too that Wolfbrook bought the course for $6 million. Not to mention all the other costs it would have incurred going through the sale and purchase process.

Is that the kind of money a local council should be spending on buying a golf course, just because the people living nearby say the place wouldn’t be the same without it? Of course not.

Now to be fair to Dan Gordon, he did say last night that the council would be looking for other partners to go into cahoots with to buy the land.

But who's going to do that? If there was any other parties out there interested in buying the golf course land and keeping it as it is, don’t you think they would have put their hand up long before now?

Of course they would have.

What’s more - and this is the biggest issue I have with this - if the Waimakariri Council did go and buy the gold course land, what sort of precedent would it set?

Because next time someone somewhere gets upset about a piece of land in their neck of the woods being sold off to developers, they’d go running to their local council pointing to Pegasus, wanting the same strings pulled for them.

That’s why this cannot happen. Because this is not just about Waimakariri. If this happens, every council will be expected to buy up land to keep NIMBYs up and down the country happy.

And who wants that?

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