Brian Kelly: Opportunity slips away

They say that good things take time. That is definitely the case with the planned Lynley Dodd Hairy Maclary tribute along Tauranga's Strand.

Creative Tauranga has been behind the project to have a trail of characters from the famous books through the central city. It has been over a year in the planning and, finally, earlier in the week the city council approved plans for nine bronze statues to grace our waterfront.

I think it's a great idea and a wonderful tribute to Tauranga's very own Dodd.

More than 10 million books in the Hairy Maclary series have been sold and most of us have read those stories to our children.

Even Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, this week named Hairy Maclary from Donaldson's Dairy as one of her favorite books.

I can just see her reading a few pages to Prince Charles.

With characters from the book like Hairy, Scarface Claw, Bottomly Potts and Schnitzel von Krumm just to name a couple being honoured will certainly generate interest along The Strand. I applaud the council for getting behind the project and congratulate Creative Tauranga's Tracey Rudduck-Gudsell on her initiative. All we need to finish the project off perhaps is Donaldson's Dairy.

That was certainly one piece of good news to come out of the corridors of power this week but there was also a bit of disappointing news, particularly for those involved in the marine industry.

Since construction began on the second harbour bridge, Tauranga has been without a slipway to handle large vessels. We lost the 600-tonne slipway, which stood in the way of the new harbour bridge and that has not been replaced. Now, I'm not a nautical type but I would have thought that replacing the slipway would have been a priority. How many times did you cross the harbour bridge and see some kind of large vessel up on the slipway? A facility like that in a major port to my way of thinking would have to be a must.

It appears as though we are happy to see the business that a slipway of that size attracts go out of town to places such as Nelson, Whangarei and Auckland.

This week, the councillors rejected a $3 million proposal to develop a marine precinct in the Mirrielees Rd area, which is a bit sad. Isn't it all about investment in the future? Again it goes back to my old argument of "build it and they will come".

One of the councillors for the project was Bill Faulkner, who I guess being a boatie could relate to the project and see the benefits that a marine park could have on our city. We are a maritime destination and we definitely should have infrastructure to support that.

Cr Faulkner was concerned that if we didn't do something about it soon then we could lose the existing businesses which are currently operating and we don't want that to happen. Apparently, council agreed in principle to a basic hard stand area and a 300-tonne travel lift. Again, it's not thinking of the future.

It's like building a 25m swimming pool when we should have built a full 50m Olympic pool. Do it once and do it right.