Great-park concept at Long Bay dismissed

A call to buy expensive housing land for a North Shore park has been dismissed as impractical by senior city council staff.

The rejection comes as campaigners for an Okura-Long Bay Great Park urge planning commissioners to favour the idea over council plans for a 200ha housing development at Long Bay.

One of them, Bernard Stanley, said the structure plan was the unpopular product of a lack of vision and commitment and lost opportunities by past city and regional councils.

Mr Stanley said they had the chance once to extend Long Bay Regional park for "peanuts."

"The loss of coastal lands to housing has brought widespread public concern and condemnation," he said. "This is confirmed by the Great Park Society's petition with 58,000 signatures and over 10,000 submissions opposing the structure plan."

City parks policy and planning manager Martin van Jaarsveld told commissioners that in future pockets of land may be acquired for parks.

But the purchase of 200ha or more for a great park could not be supported for several reasons.

Based on the present cost of land, the council could not afford it.

It would compromise its ability to provide new parks elsewhere in the growing city, such as Albany.

The council also had to provide parks which offered a range of experiences and was under pressure to provide networks of walking and cycling tracks.

Adding to Long Bay would not give as much benefit over a greater area.

Three years ago the Auckland Regional Council paid $7.9 million to developer Landco for 5.9ha of land next to the park and the city council also added to the park with a buy of 38.4ha at a cost of $22.47 million.

This gave a regional park of 152ha, so it was already a significant destination and open space park, said Mr van Jaarsveld.

In addition, the council was proposing new reserves within the structure plan area for neighbourhood use and more land for stormwater ponding.

The council was trying to balance meeting the needs of growth while protecting the environment.

City policy and planning manager Trevor Mackie told the Herald it would be difficult to find places near the beach within the regional park where one would see very much development from the reserve.

This was because of the amount of tree cover on the reserve and the structure plan allocating very little development potential to the areas north of the Awaruku Stream, near the existing park entry, and on the headlands above the park where there are extensive archaeological sites.

To the rear of the park, in the Vaughans Stream and its wetland area, there was a broad valley floor needed mainly for parks and stormwater ponding and then housing of varying types and densities in the hillsides surrounding.

Reserve acquisition and controls such as building covenants would stop housing sprawl onto the immediate escarpment backdrop to the most heavily used part of the regional park.