Room to grow

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32777, 30 November 1971, Page 14

Room to grow

The future of the Bottle Lake plantations, and of the whole coastal area between Waimairi Beach and Spencer Park, demands close consultation between the authorities concerned. The Christchurch City Council, the Waimairi County Council, and the Lands and Survey Department between them own and control the land. Each has its own ideas for the future use of the area, as does the Regional Planning Authority. Although the plans overlap, they are by no means the same. The scheme put forward last year by Waimairi County Council to develop a 1000-acre coastal strip as a public reserve with a variety of attractions has been well received; it should certainly form part of any plan for the whole area. The City Council has been adamant that the land it controls should remain in use for forestry, partly for aesthetic and ecological reasons, partly because it returns an income to the council of about §40,000 a year.

If the residential area of Christchurch is to expand, the 1500 acres of the plantations inland from the proposed recreation reserve must be one of the most attractive areas for housing. The loss to the city of revenue from forestry must be set off against the loss to the whole province if housing development takes place on more productive farm land to the west of Christchurch. The Bottle Lake area could become a satellite town of 40,000 people and provide for the city’s expansion for up to 20 years. TTie development need not take place all at once; perhaps 200 acres a year might be released for housing; but an over-all plan should be prepared so that the end result is an integrated community rather than a patchwork of subdivisions dictated largely by the whims of private developers.

Last year, at the request of the City Council, the Town and Country Planning Appeal Board excluded the plantations from urban use in spite of the protests of the Regional Planning Authority. The regional plan will not come up for review again until 1976; but the need for more land for housing will be pressing before then. The future of the area must be affected by the attitude of the new City Council, once it has time to consider the matter, and by the recommendations made recently by the' Local Government Commission. On balance, however, it appears that the plantation area should be turned over gradually to recreation and housing, perhaps with some smaller afforested blocks remaining in both sections. The expansion of Christchurch should not be proscribed in the north-east in what might be, potentially, one of the city’s most attractive suburbs.