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Some of the most photographed features of Napier’s Emerson St shopping precinct have disappeared – but it’s all good news.
They are, or were, the red-lidded wheelie bins that blotted the landscape of the CBD golden mile from Marine Parade to Clive Square, including photo-bombing and crowding out the Wave in Time bronze sculpture of Sheila Williams and a greyhound mid-way through the sector between Hastings and Dalton streets.
The statue of Sheila Williams and the greyhound, and the wheelie bins in Emerson St. The bins have been banished from the street as the Napier City Council moves to make the street a more aesthetic city centre, with less obstacles. Photo / Barry Lennox
Pharmacist Peter Bailey, one of the longest-serving in the CBD and outside whose door Sheila stands, has seen her photographed hundreds of times and says that often tourists could not have avoided having wheelie bins in the frame, other than by being Photoshopped.
It was not a “good look” for Napier’s refuse disposal to be paraded around the world as a feature all of its own, he said.
Winds of change started wafting through the CBD before Christmas, leading to the Napier City Council deciding it was time to do something about the problem. The council has came up with an alternative which has seen the bins removed and retailers told to put their rubbish in larger bins more out of sight.
Councillor Sally Crown said that the leaving of wheelie bins on the street outside of collection times “was causing issues”.
“We have worked collaboratively with Napier City Business Inc, our waste management contractor, and with the businesses and building owners on Emerson Str to come up with a solution, with a lot of input from everyone involved,” she said.
The Wave in Time Emerson St centrepiece of Sheila Williams and the greyhound, without bins. Photo / Doug Laing
The council is now trialling a solution with businesses asked to place their waste in larger centralised bins in the service lanes.
“This means Emerson St is left clear of wheelie bins,” she said. “Emerson St, as a part of our CBD network, is really important from both commercial and community perspectives. Wheelie bins being left on the street outside of collection hours were negatively affecting vibrancy and accessibility for locals and visitors alike”.
She said the solution being trialled underpins council’s support for retail and hospitality providers by providing a good level of service that helps them continue to “bring people into the CBD and create the vibrancy we know is beneficial to our city”.
The sculpture of Williams, who led the New Napier Week Carnival parade in 1933 to celebrate the city’s recovery from the earthquake, has been in place since 2010.
Doug Laing is a senior reporter based in Napier with Hawke’s Bay Today, and has 52 years of journalism experience, 42 of them in Hawke’s Bay, in news gathering, including breaking news, sports, local events, issues, and personalities.
