Landowner ups the ante on lake site

by Lee Matthews & Ewan Sargent on 19 Apr 2006 18 April 2006:

Palmerston North has wrestled with the idea of building a recreational lake for decades. Two plans are being lobbied for at the moment, but a private development-backed plan at Aokautere has raised the stakes by demanding a decision or else the idea will be lost.

If Palmerston North City Council doesn't decide this year to support the much-debated recreational lake project, the city will lose the site proposed at Aokautere.

Landowner Steve Hopcroft, whose grandfather carved a 37-hectare farm out of bush on the Aokautere River terraces, says he's sick of political shillyshallying about the lake, and the smokescreens put up by detractors espousing other sites that he thinks won't work. He owns 80 percent of the Aokautere land that would be used if the lake goes ahead, and he's issued an ultimatum.

'I've given the developers (Titan1) until the end of 2007 to have the resource consent in place. If they can't, I sell the land for 10-acre blocks. It's that simple.'

Either way, he'd make money. But he wants the lake.

'It's about more than bloody money. I could sell that land as sections tomorrow. But I'm not some new-age bullshit money person drinking fluffy coffee. I want something good for the city, for all the city.

'I'm 49 years old. This city has been wrangling about a lake for years. Let's get on with it.'

On paper, by spending $6.5 million, the city would get vested in it a 37ha lake to use for public recreation, plus 20ha of bush reserve. However, it also gets responsibility for the maintenance costs.

Palmerston North's Square is about 5ha; the lake would be roughly seven times larger than The Square. It would be big enough for Optimist and P-class yachting and would have a 1150m-long straight capable of hosting kayaking, canoeing, waka ama and masters-level international rowing. Swimming would depend on water quality, but a trout fishery is planned.

Walkways and cycle tracks would go round 90 percent of the lake shore. A substantial foot and cycle bridge would connect the city to the lake at the river end of Albert Street. Travelling via Albert Street and Church Street, that footbridge would be 3.8km from The Square. Kelvin Grove residents would have closer access once the new traffic bridge is built across the Manawatu River at Staces Road.

The developers would bankroll the rest of the lake's $20 million cost and make their profits by selling 400 sections nearby. Thirty of these sections would be between the lake and the river, boasting water views and pricetags to match.

To Lake Aokautere Development Society chairman Vaughan Cronin, who lives at Aokautere, the decision to proceed is a no-brainer. He says there isn't another site available so close to the city's heart, and the benefits for the city's quality of life are so big that he doesn't know why anyone would hesitate.

He's adamant the lake won't be just a high-priced pretty backdrop for expensive housing, of little use to the rest of the city.

'Nope. Our group is about public access, about getting the maximum use for everyone. It's not some lake for rich people, it's a city lake for everyone.'

Even people in Cloverlea and Kelvin Grove and Highbury?

'Remember how small Palmerston North actually is, in distance terms. Aucklanders would consider the whole city here a lakeside suburb.'

Mr Cronin, a geography teacher at St Peters College, says safe water for recreation is what's lacking in this city.

In New Zealand terms, Palmerston North is the poor relation with water recreation. It's the only inland city in the country that is more than 15 minutes drive from a lake or the sea.

It certainly straddles the often turbulent and fast-flowing Manawatu River, but the river banks carry warning notices about the dangers of swimming and boating.

Mr Cronin is also tired of the wrangling and political u-turns that have accompanied lake discussions.

He notes that his Year 13 geography class has, for the past 15 years, done a planning project on the lake arguments. Each year, the files just get thicker.

In July 2001, the city council agreed in principle to the development of a 37ha lake on the Aokautere site, along with a housing development.

Former Horizons Regional Council chief engineer John Philpott said a career spent studying the Manawatu River convinced him that any lake had to be out of the floodplain. The Aokautere site did not flood in 2004's massive flood.

'That's the problem with the proposal for the site on Massey land. It's flood plain. It's been under three times in the last decade,' Mr Philpott said.

Mr Hopcroft said the 2001 decision went down the gurgler after the local body election that year.

'The council spent $100,000 of ratepayers' money deciding that this site was an outstanding site.

'Then we got a new mayor and he said that all the projects had to prove themselves to him that they stacked up,' Mr Hopcroft said.

'These councillors have got to get off their hands.'

Submissions to the annual plan on the lake close on April 21.

Source: www.stuff.co.nz Manawatu Standard