Tributes for former Napier city councillor Mark Herbert

Mark Henry Herbert

(June 27, 1947 – April 14, 2024)

If former long-time Napier City councillor Mark Herbert had been 40 or 50 years before his time, a number of buildings would be acknowledged landmarks and monuments to his commitment to the city.

An elected councillor for six three-year terms, from 1998 to 2016, he died on April 14, aged 76, leaving behind a string of developments in which he had been a major part over more than three decades.

Mark Herbert as chairman of the Services Committee at the Napier City Council, of which he was a member for 18 years. Photo / NZME.

It started with the development of East Pier Hotel on former fishing company land near Te Karaka (or Perfume Point as it has been known for many years).

Opened in 1992, it sparked a transformation of the Ahuriri area including apartments and other hotels and restaurants.

There became a bit of a twist, for having sharpened his political teeth and with neighbours opposed to the establishment of a halfway house in the area, and having stood for council unsuccessfully in the Ahuriri Ward in 1995, it was his sparring with the council over expansion plans at East Pier that sparked his decision to give it a second go three years later, and success in a city-wide vote (without wards) and a seat among some stirrers in the last term of 1989-2001 Mayor Allan Dick.

But, having grown up in Dannevirke, he would become a senior member of the council in Napier, with committee chair responsibilities in the 12-year tenure of Mayor Barbara Arnott, firstly as chair of the Economic Development Committee, and then the Environment Committee, responsible for planning and the city infrastructure.

After the first term of succeeding Mayor Bill Dalton, he suffered a surprise defeat when challenged for the single Ahuriri Ward seat in 2016, before which he had indicated he was keen to do one more term.

Along the way, he was prominent in the revitalisation of the Marine Parade facilities, seeing-in museum and arts centre redevelopment resulting in the MTG and a public pools revamp which resulted in Ocean Spa.

But the big one, as noted by Arnott, and former long-time deputy mayor Kathie Furlong, in a eulogy for the April 17 funeral, at East Pier, was McLean Park, and the replacement of the aged McKenzie Grandstand by the Graeme Lowe Stand, opened in 2009 and bringing the ground into the modern age of international sports stadia, with 26 corporate boxes.

He had personally committed to selling rights to the boxes to sponsors, with long-term arrangements worth up to $100,000 each towards the funding of the project, which, with some Government help, cost about $10 million, and it was a factor in McLean Park being allocated two matches in the 2011 Rugby World Cup.

Furlong said he had a number of other pet projects, including the extension of Prebensen Dr as a western corridor arterial between the city and Taradale, the Parkland sub-division, a new Awatoto wastewater treatment plant, and Paxie’s Lane, a walk-through between Hastings St and the parade.

She noted that having been given 5/10 in a Hawke’s Bay Today report card on his first term, he was rated 9/10, and the most-improved at the end of the next

Directing closing remarks to his daughter, Victoria, and son, Hamish, Furlong said: “You can be sure that he loved his role, he was good at it, and Napier is better for his years of service.”