Report gives reality

Editor,

I wish I could share Andrea O’neil’s optimism (KMN, February 28) that the appointment of a project management group by Porirua City Council will ‘‘iron out’’ the problems and unrealistic expectations of the council’s City Centre Revitalisation Plan. From the small amount of information you have disclosed from the Wellington Waterfront Ltd report, it is clear that there are significant funding forecast errors in the council’s plan. Your article gives some detail about the costs of removing the canopies.

Would you be able to publish information about other aspects of the report? What, for example, does the report say about the viability of providing more businesses and retail space and highrise residential buildings in the city centre?

Is the present excess of commercial office space in greater Wellington seen as affecting the City Centre Revitalisation Plan?

Commissioning Wellington Waterfront Ltd to review the city centre plan was a commendable move by Porirua City Council. The few recommendations made public so far show the value of an outside point of view.

Developing the waterfront and linking it in imaginative ways to the city centre appears to have considerable merit. Combining this with the projected cleanup of the polluted harbour is sensible. ROSS PIPER,

Titahi Bay (Letter abridged) The view that the project management team would iron

out the challenges and problems of the City Centre Revitalisation Plan was the opinion of PCC strategy and planning manager Moira Lawler, not the reporter -

Editor. (KMN, February 28). It appears some Porirua City councillors have become pawns in one person’s ‘‘Field of Dreams’’.

No one, including me, is against the principle and objective of a multi-purpose all-weather surfaced facility in Porirua. However, the bone of contention is the appropriate placement for the benefit of the wider community that is not at the expense of groups who currently use Ascot Park for activity and who will not be able to if the proposed changes go ahead.

It has been known for some time that council officials’ initial advice was for another venue as more appropriate but Bernie Wood, the leader of the proposal, stated that it was Ascot Park or nowhere. The veneer of a community winwin benefit seems insincere.

Councillors unwittingly may have made a rod for their own backs as now there should be a case made for the upgrade of Natone and Cannons Creek parks to cater for the refugees from Ascot Park, along with sports outside rugby league and soccer. Let’s see how councillors who have supported Mr Wood’s project vote for the appropriation of funds on this.

Should tax and ratepayer funds or community grants be used to cement someone’s ambition for a monument of their legacy? If Mr Wood has this drive of ‘‘if you build it, they will come’’, he could always see his bank manager or seek private investors as Sir Douglas Graham and Bill Jefferies have done in their recent ventures.

Now, that would be worth the naming rights and maybe even a statue at the entrance of an all-weather surface at Ascot Park. SHANE LAULU,

Porirua East. spend some of their weekend picking up litter shows how important the health of our harbour is to our community.

On behalf of the Porirua Harbour Trust I would like to thank everyone who came along and invite anyone else who is interested to come to future cleanups.

Clearing the harbour of litter is possible and it makes a huge difference to wildlife, water quality and the general appearance of the harbour. WENDY BARRY, Porirua

Harbour Trust. and integrity – and so engineers, architects and our building officers have to take care and take time on the plans and actual construction.

It is not unusual that a number of professionals and council officers are involved in unconventional applications. Our goal is simple: to ensure the applicant’s proposal meets the building code so that the project can go ahead.

JOHN SCOTT, Wellington City Council building consents and licensing services group

manager.