World News

Matt Lauer’s New Zealand Ranch in Battle for Access Over Nearby Park

WELLINGTON, New Zealand — Matt Lauer, the former “Today” show co-host, is seeking to have New Zealand’s government pay him hundreds of thousands of dollars if he is forced to let more hikers and hunters use his ranch to get to a picturesque conservation park.

Posted Updated
Matt Lauer’s New Zealand Ranch in Battle for Access Over Nearby Park
By
Charlotte Graham-McLay
, New York Times

WELLINGTON, New Zealand — Matt Lauer, the former “Today” show co-host, is seeking to have New Zealand’s government pay him hundreds of thousands of dollars if he is forced to let more hikers and hunters use his ranch to get to a picturesque conservation park.

Lauer bought a lease to the 16,000-acre, $9 million Hunter Valley Station ranch in February 2017 through a New Zealand-based company, months before he was fired by NBC in November over accusations of sexual misconduct.

A co-host at “Today” for two decades, Lauer was fired after a colleague complained about inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace. A subsequent internal review found that other women had lodged complaints about his behavior.

Hunter Valley Station, in New Zealand’s South Island, is the only thoroughfare to Hawea Conservation Park. A public official who is advocating greater public access to the park called it “one of the jewels of the New Zealand landscape.”

The official, Eric Pyle, chief executive of the government’s Walking Access Commission, said passage through Hunter Valley Station to the park had been fraught for decades. Lauer had allowed the minimum amount of public access required by his lease when he bought it, officials said.

Pyle said the commission felt it was important to grant greater public access, as the conservation park was “essentially landlocked” without access through Lauer’s ranch. He said hunters, fishers and hikers wanted permission to use a 25-mile gravel road that passed through the property.

“Otherwise it’s a long way to carry a deer,” said Pyle, whose commission has asked New Zealand’s Commissioner of Crown Lands to make a ruling on allowing increased public access to Lauer’s ranch.

Graeme Todd, Lauer’s lawyer in New Zealand, said in an email that Lauer’s company would appeal any public access ruling through the New Zealand courts. If that failed, the law allowed for the leaseholder to receive compensation.

Todd added that if compensation were paid, his client would request “hundreds of thousands” of dollars, “if not more.”

He said Lauer had allowed 100 people access to his property and had only denied three, though others had used the land without asking.

Lauer told Radio New Zealand that the groups trying to get access were taking advantage of the “difficult times” he went through in losing his job, and were targeting him because he was an “easy mark.”

Pyle of the Walking Access Commission said that public access to Lauer’s ranch “would not be unfettered.” He noted that similar access had been allowed through other nearby properties, including two leased by the record producer Mutt Lange, who was previously married to Shania Twain.

“One of the things we’d be very happy with would be if Mutt Lange and Matt Lauer could meet, and Matt could learn from that; learn the value that could be obtained from being a great member of the community,” Pyle said, adding that Lauer would be “held in very high regard in New Zealand” if he allowed more access.

Lauer’s lease on the property was put in jeopardy after his firing from the “Today” show, when New Zealand’s government conducted a six-month investigation into whether he met the “good character” test that foreigners must pass to lease land in New Zealand.

The inquiry concluded that since Lauer had not been charged with a crime, primarily lived in the United States and was not involved in the New Zealand ranch’s day-to-day operations, he would be allowed to keep the property. But officials who conducted the investigation said they “did not condone the inappropriate way” Lauer had behaved while at NBC, and that it would “continue to monitor the matter.”

New Zealand’s acting prime minister, Winston Peters, told Radio New Zealand on Tuesday that he was adamant Lauer not receive any public money if he were forced to provide greater public access to the land.

Peters said the Overseas Investment Office, which approved granting the lease to Lauer, dropped the ball when it had failed to fully negotiate public access before agreeing to the deal.

Official documents released to Stuff.co.nz under a freedom of information request revealed that officials had discussed “crowdfunding” compensation for Lauer if any were awarded. One official suggested that the possibility of compensating Lauer was complicated by the fact he was a “a very wealthy American with a tarnished reputation,” referring to his firing.

But Pyle from the Walking Access Commission said he had not yet spoken to Lauer personally, and hoped a solution could still be found.

“We’d be very pleased to have the conversation with Matt,” he said. “I’d strongly encourage Matt to pick up the phone and say, ‘How can we work through this?'”

Copyright 2024 New York Times News Service. All rights reserved.