North Shore City media release

Long Bay back on agenda
March 30, 2007

Greater protection of the backdrop to the 116-hectare Long Bay Regional Park will be on the agenda when North Shore City Council meets the Auckland Regional Council [ARC], Government and the Long Bay-Okura Great Park Society.

The city council this week received a 150-strong deputation from the society, led by convenor Fiona McLaughlin and Sally Cargill who chairs the city’s East Coast Bays Community Board. Representatives from each of North Shore’s other five community boards were present to lend their support.

Councillors listened as the society made its impassioned plea for further action from local, regional and central Government to:

• strengthen planning protection of natural, cultural and landscape values;
• protect archaeologically significant areas;
• ensure that the marine reserve is protected, including exploring initiatives such as a stringent monitoring programme of any development and the use of compliance bonds; and
• buy more reserve land, including the adjoining Grannies Bay and the Awaruku ridge.

In 2003 the North Shore City Council, after a lengthy arbitration process, paid $23.4 million to Landco, the major landowner at Long Bay, for 38.5 hectares alongside the regional park. Located by the Okura River and at Pohutukawa Bay, the parkland status safeguards the area’s marine reserve.

Later, the ARC spent almost $8m to buy three additional pieces of land, totalling 5.8 hectares, to add to its park which attracts 1.5 million visitors a year.

While the people of Auckland own the Long Bay Regional Park as part of ARC’s regional parks network, the rest of the land has been held in private ownership for many years and is not, as some believe, public parkland.

Mayor George Wood will write to the ARC and MPs seeking a meeting to see what further actions each can take to address the society’s concerns.

“We’ve invested heavily in parkland additions, helped pay for an international fund raiser and successfully lobbied other funding providers over recent years.

“We respect the society’s efforts and I was delighted to present then convenor, the late David Gatward, with a North Shore City Civic Award a few years ago.

“There are many complex and costly challenges but we’re prepared to sit down and talk them through,” Mr Wood says.

North Shore City’s community services and parks committee chairman Margaret Miles says she supports protecting the Long Bay Park backdrop for the benefit of those who visit and enjoy the park now.

Her council has invested $56m buying land for parks since 2000, including the significant Long Bay land purchase. In addition, North Shore City Council spends $22m each year maintaining and upgrading the reserves it already has.

Councillor Miles says this significant sum proves the council’s commitment to protecting the city’s green and leafy character by improving and extending the parks network.

“There is now approximately 1740 hectares of green open space within North Shore City, a residential location favoured because of its green look.

“Over a number of years this council has been carefully negotiating to acquire land for parks throughout the city, some to extend existing beloved reserves and to create new ones in areas where there is strong housing demand and need for recreational space,” she says.

North Shore City Council is currently seeking suggestions for a new name for its 38.5-hectare land adjoining the Long Bay Regional Park. Since the land was purchased in 2002 it has had the working title ‘Long Bay Reserve’ and members of the public have requested that a more suitable name be considered. Submissions on the proposed name change close on April 20.

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