Long term $750m plan to develop Paraparaumu airport

The new owners of Paraparaumu Airport, on the Kapiti Coast north of Wellington, have long term plans for hundreds of millions of dollars to be spent developing the facility providing thousands of jobs.

Paraparaumu Airport Holdings' major shareholder Noel Robinson told The Dominion Post that he and two other investors, accountant Steve Bootten and property investment manager Tom Hoare, had bought the airport for "well under $40 million".

The new owners wanted to enhance the 131ha site's potential as a source of business growth and employment, and as a community amenity, Mr Robinson said.

"We want to create about 8000 new jobs, so half the local population will not have to travel out of the district to work, as it does now."

Fifteen consultants were working on the project, and it was planned that $750 million would be spent in a 30-year redevelopment.

Plans included walkways, open spaces, canals (up to 2km long and 20m wide), water features and sculptures, two terminals and a network of wide tree-lined boulevards in a new commercial area.

The main runway would be extended to allow planes carrying up to 70 people to land, with the aim of making the airport a major subregional facility, although not in competition with Wellington Airport.

In 1995 the National government sold the airport complex to Murray Cole and some associates for $1.65 million. Soon afterward the new owners sold part of the area to a developer for $800,000.

In 2004 Te Whanau a te Ngarara and airport users opposed Paraparaumu Airport Ltd's application for a plan change to include a mix of airport-residential, commercial, general business and varied aviation use.

The iwi staged an occupation at the airport in protest that the land had not been offered back to it, as members believed it should have been under the Public Works Act, through which it was taken during World War 2.

- NZPA