Auckland Board Votes 4-3 to End Sauna Collective’s Run at Ōrewa Beach Holiday Park

Auckland Council’s Hibiscus and Bays Local Board voted 4-3 on October 27 to turn down Sauna Collective’s proposal to keep its wood-fired sauna trailer at the council-owned Ōrewa Beach Holiday Park, where it had operated since November 2024. The business had until October 29 to leave. After the meeting, park management told owner Cameron Mackinnon that he couldn’t come back in the off-season either, he told the NZ Herald.

Sauna Collective now takes bookings for a Sunday pop-up in nearby Millwater, and Mackinnon hopes to find another Ōrewa site before the end of January, Local Matters reported on November 3.

The board’s resolution says the sauna is “no longer compatible” with the park’s operations and that guests would be “negatively impacted,” costing the park revenue. Council staff had recommended saying no. The park sits on a recreation reserve under New Zealand’s Reserves Act 1977, and a sauna there would need a resource consent under the Auckland Unitary Plan, the staff report says.

Guests complained about smoke, noise and views

Sauna Collective started at the park as a trial that the holiday park manager allowed in late 2024, for three or four days a week. It left for the summer peak in each of its first two seasons, and in 2026 it had permission to run on its beachfront site continuously. In late August, management told it to leave by September 25, citing peak-season demand, the effect on guests and “outstanding compliance requirements,” and later extended that to October 29.

The staff report lists guest complaints about noise, the size of the trailer blocking beach views, and smoke from the sauna’s fire drifting into a regular customer’s caravan. That customer decided to camp elsewhere in future, and staff gave another guest a three-night credit. Guests were also concerned about more foot traffic through the park, since most sauna customers are locals rather than campers. In one incident, a sauna customer drove carelessly through the park and directed abusive language at a staff member. The report doesn’t give a total number of complaints.

Council compliance officers are assessing how the wood burner and its emissions should be regulated, and the report flags the chimney’s closeness to mature pōhutukawa trees as a fire and tree-health risk. Staff note that lighting and reheating the furnaces produce the most smoke, and the sauna’s advertised hours ran from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m.

The offer matched what a premium campsite earns

Mackinnon offered to pay NZ$22,000 to NZ$25,000 a year, depending on whether the sauna could stay through the peak season, against the NZ$1,100 a month he was paying. He also offered, RNZ reported, to close from December to Waitangi Day, February 6, and to compensate nearby campers. The park expects a beachfront premium site to earn NZ$23,000 a year.

The park takes in more than NZ$2.24 million (US$1.26 million) a year and returned about NZ$750,000 to the board last financial year to fund local projects. It has added four two- and three-bedroom cabins at the north end, near the sauna’s site, forecast to bring in NZ$252,000 a year. Staff estimated the sauna could cost the park up to NZ$24,000 a year in lost bookings on larger sites near it, and NZ$27,000 a year if the new cabins had to cut their rates.

The board also rejected two alternatives in the report: a scaled-back electric sauna on a non-premium site in the low season, and a call for expressions of interest from any operator. Either would still need a resource consent, a building consent and landowner approval, with an uncertain outcome, the resolution says. It adds that a direct deal with the current operator “raises fairness and precedent concerns.”

“The decision was not about whether the local board supports the sauna but whether it is the right fit for this location,” board chair Alexis Poppelbaum told the NZ Herald. A week later she told Local Matters the business was “a victim of its own success” and called the rules on commercial activity in parks inconsistent.

Three members voted to keep it

Poppelbaum and members Julia Parfitt, Gregg Walden and Mike Bishop voted for the motion. Deputy chair Jake Law and members Leanne Willis and Gemma Moffat voted against it. The resolution notes “the strong local Ōrewa community support” for the business and thanks the people who emailed the board. The ward’s councillor, John Watson, had told the Herald in September, “I want to see everything done to keep them in Ōrewa.”

“I didn’t envision a complete no,” Mackinnon told the Herald. He said he would ask one of the three members who voted against the motion to bring the decision back for reconsideration. No notice of motion had been filed by November 4. The board’s next regular meetings are on November 24 and December 15. The resolution covers only the holiday park; a bid for another council park would go through the usual landowner approval and consents.

Other councils have refused saunas on reserve land

Beach saunas have spread fast in New Zealand. The Sauna Project, which started in Mount Maunganui, had 17 locations by June 2025, The Guardian reported, and Wellington’s Sink Bathhouse & Sauna opened in Miramar in October. Public land has been harder to get. Southland District Council declined a floating sauna in a Te Anau park in May, after 170 of 210 submissions opposed it. Central Otago District Council refused a mobile sauna’s trading permit in Cromwell in 2025 because the spots it wanted were reserve land, and Marlborough District Council left a Picton proposal on the table in 2024 rather than reject it.

The Ōrewa board decided an open call for operators wasn’t worth its cost while the consent question is unresolved. Other public landowners have gone that way. Idaho State Parks put a sauna concession out to bid in April, and Tasmania is asking developers to pitch thermal bathing on public land.