Piha Fine Foods Ltd (Piha Cafe) has been granted a liquor licence by Auckland Council to serve alcohol from 11am to 7 pm seven days of the week. This is the first outlet at Piha able to sell alcohol during the daytime and to the general public.
This will surprise many in the Piha community who believed the Cafe was only seeking a licence for the Rugby World Cup and which was opposed by several neighbours and Protect Piha Heritage Society.
However, few people were aware that at the same time the Cafe was seeking a full licence.
The process for granting a licence for previously unlicensed premises is that it must be publically notified. This involves public notices in newspapers and a prominently displayed notice on or adjacent to the cafe. This gives neighbours and interested parties a chance to support or oppose the licence or to ask for conditions such as times and days of the week. In this case, the notice was published twice in the New Zealand Herald and was posted on the cafe door.
No other direct notification of neighbours or interested parties is required, although you might have thought the Cafe owners would have chosen to do so, so that the process was open and transparent. In addition, Mr Peter Dillon, cafe owner, had stated publically that he wanted to find out what the community wanted. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10731902
Neither was anything about the proposed licence published on the Cafe website or the Village Voice website.
As it was, those with an interest were concentrating on the RWC application unaware that another permanent application had been lodged. Consequently, no objections were lodged against the application and the licence has been granted.
When the owners of the Seaview Road site were originally seeking support for the cafe proposal, they reassured the Piha community that alcohol would not be served. Some submissions to the original application for the land use to Waitakere City Council, stated support for the cafe as long as there was no alcohol. During the Environment Court hearing, some submitters in favour of the Cafe said they supported it because it provided an alcohol-free venue unlike the RSA or Surf Club (which are open only at night). Other submitters argued that once permission for the cafe was granted, it was inevitable that a licence would eventually be sought. Concerns about alcohol at the cafe centre on the potential for increased noise and traffic, concerns about drink-driving on the difficult Piha Road, especially those unfamiliar with the road, and the undesirability of people inbibing alcohol before swimming.