New names and numbers for streets

Forty years living in Union St is about to end for 90-year-old Waihi resident Mary Mathis. Photo / John Borren

Forty years living in Union St is about to end for 90-year-old Waihi resident Mary Mathis when the name of her street changes to Amaranth.

"I think it's stupid, I can't see any logic to it," the retired farmer's widow told the Bay of Plenty Times yesterday.

Mrs Mathis has joined the 143 property owners in the Bay goldmine town who will have their streets both renamed and renumbered.

She understood why the Hauraki District Council needed to renumber large areas of the town but was totally baffled why her end of Union St needed a name change. "I would like to stay in Union St."

Other residents were also puzzled about why their end of the street, divided by SH2, needed a new name.

Mary Gillanders said Amaranth was not even easy to pronounce whereas Union St rolled off the tongue.

She understood that the reasons behind the big renaming and renumbering exercise dated back to the 1800s when Waihi sprung from the ground as a temporary gold town with squatters huts.

"The streets were not planned properly and the mining kept going."

However, Mrs Gillanders was looking forward to the street numbers finally getting sorted.

The other major renaming was to discontinue the name Rosemont Rd past its dog-leg intersection with Consols and Johnston streets. The southern end of Rosemont Rd will be called Nicholl St, in honour of William Nicholl who first developed the Martha Mine.

Amaranth was the original name for the underground gold mining reef that ran close to the Union reef.

Elizabeth Hughes, the spokeswoman for the renumbering and renaming project, explained all the changes were being driven by the Land Information New Zealand guidelines. "Ninety per cent of the town is out of whack."

The western end of Union St was being renamed because Land Information said that streets and street numbers should begin where they intersected with highways.

"If we left it like it was, it was going to cause more problems than if we didn't create another name."

Waihi Ward chairman Harry Shepherd said Waihi had street names that were both random and quirky, such as properties numbered out of sequence and roads changing name in the middle of the same stretch of road.

He said the changes were being driven by confusion when police, fire and ambulance services responded to emergency calls, particularly when staff were new to the town.

The randomness of names and numbers also created inefficiencies for NZ Post and other service agencies.

Mr Shepherd said that while 90 per cent of Waihi's addresses would need to change to be fully compliant with Land Information, the council had decided to address the worst 23 per cent.

Ms Hughes said one of the compromises had been where Parry Palm Ave ended and Seddon St started. Parry Palm Ave should have been brought back to start at the shopping centre's main SH2 roundabout, but renumbering and renaming would have caused too much grief for businesses.

Lois Healy, a resident of Wrigley St, one of Waihi's most confusingly numbered streets, said people would soon get used to the changes.

The changeover takes place on March 1, with all the costs met by the council.