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Source: ONE News -
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A man battling cancer has had his dreams shattered as a tourism operation he has built to benefit the small town of Mangaweka south of Taihape is being sold up by the Bank of New Zealand.
Trevor Soler has spent years on the project - an upmarket backpacker lodge that is 95% completed - but says he will bulldoze it down before he lets anyone else carry out his dream.
The lodge, hidden beneath the cliffs of the Rangitikei River, is considered a slice of paradise.
Soler says he is very disappointed. "It's pretty disappointing to see it all fold like this when I have put every ounce of energy and money I could scrape together into it."
The BNZ is putting the tourism operation up for mortgagee sale on Saturday which is heartbreaking for Soler who has just discovered he has skin cancer and devastating for Mangaweka.
"It's going to be detrimental to us as well as everyone else. It's just another feather in our cap � having it throws everything out," says Bernard McQueen from Hill Country Helicopters.
Soler says he needs an extra $126,000 to finish the project but the BNZ says the project was late and Soler had no certainty of income to repay the debt.
But builder Mike Tracey says BNZ has no vision.
"This has drifted out of their criteria and they are not prepared to tip a little extra to finish it off and the result of that is Mangaweka will lose a very important tourist operation," says Tracey.
If the backpacker lodge is finished, it will sleep about 70 people. But because it's right by the river, Manawatu District Council has a lot of rules and regulations and getting resource consent has been a long and difficult process.
Building consents have taken two years and cost an extra $200,000.
"I definitely don't want someone coming in and picking up my vision, my capital gain. I would rather bulldoze everything flat," says Soler.
