Mount Cook planning

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32425, 12 October 1970, Page 12

Mount Cook planning

The plan of the Ministry of Works for the development of facilities at Mount Cook has still to be considered by the Government and the park board; but no major changes are likely to be made to the plan and interested parties now have the necessary guidance to allow them to put new projects in hand. The plan provides for the spending by public and private agencies of nearly $l2 million over, perhaps, 20 years. More than half this sum is earmarked for accommodation—l7oo new beds, offering a variety of standards of accommodation. The expansion of facilities will come none too soon. Even without the proposed aerial cablewayto the Annette Plateau the number of visitors to the area increases by some thousands each year. Last year it reached more than 100,000 for the first time. Improvements to the road leading to the Hermitage must encourage more private motorists to visit the area and an early start needs to be made on facilities to handle them.

The planners appear to be still undecided about the extent of development within the park itself. The Hermitage site has been reserved for tourist facilities; and all but essential buildings are excluded from it. A start has been made on a new village six miles away on the edge of the park at Birch Hill. This was to include sites for holiday homes and homes for park staff as well as accommodation for those working at the Hermitage. Now there is a possibility that an area much closer to the Hermitage, at Black Birch Stream, may be developed to provide a site for staff quarters and a reservoir of development sites for “unforeseen “ needs

This would still be in accord with the desire to interfere as little as possible with the natural beauty of the park and to ensure that buildings remain unobtrusive. There must be no weakening, however; of the resolve to keep the main new village on the edge of the park at Birch Hill. The plan at present envisages two new licensed hotels on the Hermitage site; it might be wiser to build one of them at Birch Hill to act as a focal point for this settlement. A hotel there, and the growth of other facilities around it, would ease the strain on the Hermitage area and cater for a proportion of the many visitors who are in pursuit of sedentary rather than active pleasures.