Shops Must Go In Road Plan

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30804, 16 July 1965, Page 1

Shops Must Go In Road Plan

Twenty businesses at the intersection of Memorial avenue, Fendalton road, and Clyde road are affected by decisions made by the Waimairi County Council last evening.

Memorial avenue and Fendalton road cruse a bend where they join across Clyde road, and the Christchurch master transport plan provides for 33ft of widening on the north side of both Memorial avenue and Fendalton road to ease the alignment. The council decided to rezone the existing commercial area at the intersection to residential A. It was said that 12 shops and the Post Office on the north side would have to go when the road was widened, and that those on the south side could continue. The effect of the rezoning is that shops on the south side may be sold, but cannot be altered. The town planning committee’s chairman (Cr. A. E.

Wagner) said that the deci- i sion involved removal of i shops at the time the road s was widened. Those shops \ not affected by the widening t would be allowed to remain i as an existing non-conforming t use. 1 “Bad Corner” “It is a bad corner,” said t Cr. Wagner. “It is already i congested by parking, and one t of the stages we may have to j consider is a ban on all park- | ing in Memorial avenue and | Fendalton road ” , The committee reported , that Mr J. I. Colligan, Cr. O. C. Mitchell, the County , Clerk (Mr K. Maclachlan), t the County Engineer (Mr I. . Calvert) had met the Reg- { ional Planning Authority’s , regional traffic engineer (Mr , M. Douglas) and discussed f various schemes. ( Four Proposals j One was for complete re- , moval of all the shops. This, from a traffic point of view, , was felt to be the best solu- i tion, but technical and legal i difficulties arose. . i If the shops were com- , pletely removed, it would be ;

necessary, if the land was acquired by proclamation, to show that buying the shops was necessary for road work, not just for good town planning. The result of this was that some shops could be left. A second proposal was that the shops be moved to a site in Memorial avenue. This procedure would be long and involved, and it would first be necessary to zone avenue land commercial, and to rezone the land at the intersection residential. As the land and shops would have to be acquired by the council, this could be expensive and take a long time because of the objections that would be received. The majority of the committee felt that it would be wrong to establish a shopping area in the avenue, which was a war memorial. Another scheme involved a major deviation from Waiwetu street to Otara street, involving 12 houses. This would allow the shops to remain, but a major disadvantage would be that the shops

would still be 100 yards from the intersection. Again, it would be a long and involved process. “Most Acceptable” A fourth scheme involved removal of the shops from the north side of the intersection, leaving those to the south. For expediency, this compromise seemed to all the committee members the most acceptable. The Regional Planning Authority had produced a plan of this proposal, allowing for removal of the north shops during road realignment, the rezoning of all four corners as residential, with existing shops retaining existing use rights. The committee recommended the council to adopt . this plan, to take immediate steps to rezone the whole of the intersection from comi mercial to residential A and that Mr Mitchell, Cr. Wagner, , Mr Maclachlan and Mr Calvert i be authorised to tell the shop- ■ keepers. The recommendation was i adopted.