Ideas are being sought for a revamp of Paihia’s Horotutu Park, seen here crowded with visitors and locals counting down to the New Year’s Eve fireworks in 2019. Photo / Peter de Graaf
Ideas are being sought for a revamp of Paihia’s Horotutu Park, seen here crowded with visitors and locals counting down to the New Year’s Eve fireworks in 2019. Photo / Peter de Graaf
Paihia residents have until the end of this week to submit their ideas for a $2 million upgrade of their town’s waterfront.
Cash for the revamp comes from a $1.7m Far North District Council grant, plus $300,000 raised by community group Focus Paihia.
Stage one, which is already under way, will involve improving lighting along Marsden Rd and Kings Rd.
Stage two will entail a makeover of the waterfront from Horotutu/Our Place to Bayview Rd, including Te Maiki Hill, while stage three promises a longer-term rejuvenation of The Bluff or Nihonui Pt.
In particular, Focus Paihia wants public help with designing stage two, which focuses on the green space near Paihia Wharf, but it’s also calling for ideas for The Bluff.
Ideas submitted by Friday, January 13, will be fed into two days of community design workshops at the Copthorne Hotel in Waitangi on January 14-15.
The workshops will be facilitated by David Engwicht, an urban design guru who lectures worldwide on transport, community and creativity.
A “place-making” workshop by Engwicht more than a decade ago provided the initial inspiration for Focus Paihia and its many projects since then, including the creation of the popular Horotutu Park on what used to be an unsightly and wasteful carpark.
Focus Paihia has also upgraded the area around the wharf, beautified the Village Green, created Waitangi Mountain Bike Park, rebuilt the Marsden Rd toilets — once described as the worst in New Zealand — and installed crime-busting CCTV cameras.
A design for Horotutu will be completed as a result of the workshops, but further consultation with local hapū will be carried out before plans for The Bluff are finalised.
Focus Paihia volunteer Jonny Greener, left, and urban design guru David Engwicht demolish part of a Marsden Rd toilet block once described as the worst public loo in New Zealand. Photo / Peter de Graaf
The council’s share of the funding was originally part of its contribution to a multimillion-dollar maritime project co-funded by the Government’s Provincial Growth Fund.
The project, which had been in the making for more than 15 years, was to have included a series of breakwaters around Paihia, the restoration of Horotutu Beach and the construction of a waterfront promenade.
The breakwater plan sharply divided the Paihia community and was eventually abandoned, with the loss of the Government’s $8m share of the funding.
The council’s $5.8m share, however, was retained in its long-term budget.
Of that, $1.7m was instead pledged to Paihia waterfront improvements, and a public meeting was held in September last year to gather ideas on how to spend the remaining $4.1m.
A long list of ideas was compiled, but the final decision is not known.
