Clevedon CARES

For release: 22 September 2006

Don McGlashan to Perform Live for Environment Campaign

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Hot on the heels of receiving a top music award, Don McGlashan is to perform at a fundraising concert for opponents of a housing development planned for the countryside around Auckland.

Earlier this week, the singer/songwriter’s composition, ‘Bathe in the River’, from the soundtrack of the film ‘No.2’, won him the coveted 2006 Apra Silver Scroll for best New Zealand song.

Next month, he is to perform live to a capacity crowd for Clevedon CARES, as part of its campaign against the housing development, a canal-based project intended for near Clevedon, to the South-East of Auckland.

“I support Clevedon CARES in their efforts to preserve the rural character of the Clevedon coast and Valley,” says Don.

He will be singing at the spacious Clevedon Café on Tuesday 10th October in a solo concert that will include favourites such as ‘Anchor Me’, as well as ‘Bathe in the River’ and items from his new album ‘Warm Hand’.

“We’re very grateful to Don for finding the time to help our campaign and for offering to perform free. His music is loved and enjoyed by a very wide range of people and, predictably, the concert was sold out within a few days, and not just to locals,” says Clevedon CARES spokesperson, Mary Whitehouse.

“It’s also heartening to learn that Don shares our opposition to a scheme that would double our local population and place a huge strain on our local infrastructure, while jeopardising the Clevedon valley’s rural character,” she adds.

Known as the Wairoa River Maritime Village, the proposed development would involve 297 homes built in close proximity to each other on man-made canals.
"As the development is for residential use only, the shops, businesses and services required by the new homes would need to be built in Clevedon itself and in our local countryside. So, along with the rural environment, Clevedon’s own unique village atmosphere would be endangered.

"An additional concern is that the canal project would involve land being rezoned under a Plan Change adopted by the Manukau City Council. Our fear is that, once rezoning becomes possible, the door will be open to a wide range of other projects which would further disrupt and alter our local environment,” says Mary Whitehouse.

Clevedon residents rejected the Plan Change, by a ratio of 6 to 1, in the second round of submissions to Council, in May this year. A Council ‘hearing’ of these submissions is expected during November.

ENDS

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