Shelly Bay, on Miramar peninsula in Wellington, has caused all manner of strife as developers push to turn it into a $500m development.

A Wellington iwi is aiming to get back into Wellington's Shelly Bay development, where it has already lost millions of dollars.

A Christmas Day newsletter to Taranaki Whanui members shows that Port Nicholson Block Settlement Trust (PNBST) is in talks with The Wellington Company to acquire land the development company hopes to get from Wellington City Council at the site, where the controversial $500 million development led by developer Ian Cassels is planned.

"TWC is also looking to assist us to gain a reserve at Shelly Bay. We will be looking to advance these discussions into a concrete proposal in the new year in tandem with TWC and WCC," the newsletter said.

ROSS GIBLIN/STUFF Andy Foster announced his Mayoral run at Shelly Bay, where he opposes a development as it was planned there.

But that would almost-certainly require Wellington City councillors to agree to sell the land - a move that would require a number of them to back down on pre-election statements.

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Enterprise Miramar, which has strongly opposed the development on the western side of Miramar Peninsula, surveyed all council candidates before the local body elections asking, if consent is granted, whether they would "support the decisions required to facilitate and implement the current proposed development, such as the sale and lease of the WCC land at Shelly Bay?".

KEVIN STENT/STUFF Shelly Bay in Wellington is the site of a hotly-contested $500m development.

Not a single councillor who was elected was in favour, with Jennie Condie, Diane Calvert, Simon Woolf, Iona Pannett, Sean Rush, and Laurie Foon, Teri O'Neill, and Mayor Andy Foster all specifically-opposed to the development as it stood. The eight make up a majority of the 15-member council.

The council currently owns the sea-fringe of the site on the western edge of Miramar peninsula. PNBST had owned the vast majority of the inland area, where most of a $500m development is planned, but recently sold three of its four parcels to companies owned by Cassels.

Members were told in August that PNBST had struck a deal to sell the final chunk of land for $10m to Cassels-owned The Wellington Company. The current listed owner of that property is Shelly Bay Taikuru Ltd, which is owned by Cassels and his partner Patricia Caitlin Taylor.

But the newsletter to members shows that PNBST now wants to buy the council land - which is land PNBST-then chair Wayne Mulligan in 2017 said wasn't actually needed for the development to go ahead.

"If council says no, we will go forth and develop our land," Mulligan said in 2017 as councillors heard submissions on whether it should sell and lease its land there to developers. He then said that most of the planned private development was on iwi-owned land and if the council failed to sell it would only affect public space.

MANDY TE/STUFF Wellington Company's managing director Ian Cassels at Shelly Bay.

It later transpired that, in June 2017, three of those four parcels of iwi land had been sold to Cassels' companies.

PNBST was set up to manage the Treaty of Waitangi settlement for Wellington iwi Taranaki Whanui.

The Deed of Settlement was signed on August 19, 2008. On that day, iwi agreed to buy at least two of the four parcels of land available at Shelly Bay and soon had all four, essentially making up the bulk of the land, though not the immediate coastline, at Shelly Bay. ﻿

FELIX DESMARAIS/STUFF Shelly Bay is a former air force base.

The iwi paid $15.2m for four blocks of land at Shelly Bay but in June, 2017, three of those four parcels were sold to Shelly Bay Investments for $2m. The final one reportedly sold for $10m.

Taranaki Whanui members opposed to the sale argued the deal was done secretly and without the mandate of members, who had voted the sale down. The group - Mau Whenua - got a caveat put on the sale of the final parcel but that lapsed earlier in December.