Report from Destination Waikanae
It was great to see so many of you at the Destination Waikanae stall at the Waikanae Market on Saturday. We were there to introduce some alternative Town Centre ideas that the urban planners in our group have been working on to generate discussion and interest from the community – and we got this in bucketloads! We were delighted with your responses and are planning to take them to the design engineers and council next week.
Highlights for us were:
– the number of the public who are now more aware about the Town Centre project and the options (we probably chatted to at least 100 people)
– the number of Town Centre landowners who are now more engaged, informed and willing to participate
– the very high level of interest in locals doing good things for their community
– the real agreement with some of the alternative options
– the intense disagreement about opening up Mahara Place to vehicles
– the intense desire for better car parking and accessibility
– the concern about the Ngaio Road upgrade option (who will build the buildings and what about the existing Town Centre?)
– the number of local skilled people (civil engineers, business people, surveyors, planners etc etc) who were keen to keep involved
– the number of younger people who want to be part of Waikanae’s future
– at least a dozen new members of Destination Waikanae Inc.
We’ll keep you up-to-date with our progress – thank you again for your support! And thank you Maude for never giving up during the week when we were organising the stall, and to everyone else for their huge efforts, especially Andrew (display designer extraordinaire), David, and Paul
