PETONE BOROUGH

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 131, 27 February 1929, Page 13

PETONE BOROUGH

ACCESS TO RECREATION GROUND

PROPOSED RIGHT-OF-WAY

At the invitation of the Borough Council, the Minister of Justice (Hou. T. M. Wilford) visited Petone yesterday to consider the proposal of the council to take a right-of-way, 22 feet wide, through the Police Department’s property in Riddiford Street, in order to give access from the main centre to the Recreation Ground. The Department possesses over two acres of very valuable land there, and the time was coming, it was stated, when a police station would be required. The council wished to know whether the Government would consent to the right-of-way being laid through the Department’s property. The present police station, which consists of two rooms, the whole structure being 25ft. by 15ft., is considered quite useless for tile district now, and with over two acres of land available there are possibilities, if the right-of-way is provided by the council, of the police property facing that right-of-way being divided into a large number of sections. At present none of the back part of the property faces any street. There is room for at least eight houses, and there are already erected on the site a courthouse and a sergeant’s dwelling. The Minister, with Superintendent Emerson, the Mayor of Petone (Mr. D. McKenzie), the borough engineer, and the town clerk, visited the property to consider the best way to utilise it in the event of the proposal being accepted by the council.

After going over the site and Inspecting the proposed line of road, the Minister stated that he was agreeable to the proposal and would be pleased to confer with the Mayor after the council had sanctioned the suggested route, and would then consider bringing before Cabinet in the new financial year a proposal for a new police station to be built between the sergeant’s house and the police court. The Mayor thanked the Minister for his reply and asked him whether, if the road was made by the council, there would be any way by which the land which was made available for building on could be rated by the council. The Minister replied that that was a question of policy on which he could give no opinion until the matter had been brought up for consideration by the Government.