NEARLY FINISHED

Dominion, Volume 18, Issue 270, 20 August 1925, Page 8

NEARLY FINISHED

KENT TERRACE RESERVE WORK AND ELIZABETH STREET EXTENSION Though retarded by a lot of wet weather, the task of l cleaning up and putting in order the Kent Terrace Reserve, between Elizabeth Street and the northern end, is at length moving on towards completion. The cost will be very heavy, owing chiefly to the reduction of the level of the reserve to that of the road on either side, which necessitated a great deal of excavation and haulage. This spoil was removed to Oriental Bay, where it made the best of filling for the sea-wall opposite the Orient Private Hotel. The cost of putting the reserve into order north of the Queen’s statute is to be borne by the tramways department, which was responsible for its disruption through the insertion of a siding on the eastern side. The work that is being done on the southern side of the statue, in harmony with that of the northern side, is to be paid for out of ordinary revenue. There are three large garden plots on the northern side, which are now being filled with loam, and will, according to the director of reserves, be planted in dwarf shrubs and flowering plants. , Flower beds, unprotected, would never flourish in such, an exposed position, says Mr. Mackenzie, so protection is to be given by the planting, in the first instance, of hardy dwarf shrubs, which may be expected to stand up to the hard northerlies which sweep up Kent Terrace from the harbour and Clyde Quay. That part of the reserve which has "been converted into an addition to Cambridge Terrace and Courtenay Place has been . laid down roughly in bitumen, and will be finished off as soon as the weather permits. The strip reclaimed on the Cambridge Terrace side is to be reserved of an evening for a parking place for private cars.

Good progress has been made with the extension of Elizabeth . Street through the reserve—a full chain-wide street with rounded corners. This bit of road has been given a foundation of six inches of concrete, reinforced an inch and a half from the ground with expanded metal, and on the top of that will be added a cushion of two inches of bitumen. Given fine weather this work should be almost completed by .the end of next week.