Long Bay park gets bigger but calls grow for more

By WAYNE THOMPSON

Auckland's most popular regional park is proving almost too popular.

Long Bay Regional Park has attracted up to 25,000 visitors a day during summer, prompting calls by environmentalists to make it four times bigger.

The park, on the North Shore's east coast, lures more than a million people a year with its 1km-long beach, cliff-top walkway, views of the Hauraki Gulf, safe swimming, playground, picnic spots and marine reserve.

Only 26km from downtown Auckland, it serves a wide area beyond East Coast Bays.

Cars queue to get in and parking capacity for 1200 vehicles fills to overflowing on many afternoons.

This demand is seen as ample evidence by the Long Bay-Okura Great Park Society to back its call for the park to be enlarged from 110ha to 405ha by incorporating neighbouring farmland.

Society president David Gatward said 41,500 people had signed a petition calling for the Great Park to be designated on land that otherwise would be used for houses.

He said members were grateful but not satisfied when the North Shore City Council and the Auckland Regional Council designated 44.4ha of land for park expansion.

City council parks chairwoman Margaret Miles said that after 18 months of negotiations a deal had been reached to buy 38.5ha from Landco Long Bay.

The price for the land, which borders the Okura River, would be settled by arbitration.

Mrs Miles would not comment on how much the council was prepared to pay but property sources say it could be up to $20 million.

"We must look ahead and secure now the open space needs for present and future generations," she said.

ARC parks committee chairman Bill Burrill said his council was still negotiating with Landco to buy key pieces on the park's fringe totalling 5.7ha.

Last August, the council said it would compulsorily acquire the land to add a green buffer zone between the park and future housing development.

This followed Landco's advertising for "well-heeled beach bums" to buy in the "last coastal subdivision of its kind in urban Auckland".

Landco director Greg Olliver said the property was the most valuable block in New Zealand and the city council had made a good decision in accepting Landco's offer of setting a fair market price by arbitration.

Principal ranger Richard Balm said extra land would be welcomed to ease the pressure on the park.

Landco has cleared a cluster of 26 baches on leased sites, saying the resource consent that allowed them had expired last August.

Mr Balm said the new area had big pohutukawa trees that would provide shade for picnics.

Carparking could also be moved away from the beachfront to the new area, which was further inland.