NORTHERN PROGRESS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVIII, Issue 17956, 5 December 1921, Page 10

NORTHERN PROGRESS.

BUSINESS STABILITY. PUBLIC SERVICES. Whangarei is one of the most thriving, alert, and vigorous business centres in the two Islands. Many of its business premises present the appearance of city stores, and it is quite certain, as many visitors from Southern cities have remarked, that you can easily feel, when inspecting Whangarei, Shops, that you are in one or other of the busy streets of a prosperous city. It is difficult at present to get any* business premises, even at a high premium, without getting in early and being willing to wait. This will be remedied in time by alterations and new buildings. It is due to the quick growth of the town on the one hand, and on the other to the suspension of building operations in the business area during the war period. Since the close of the war the building of dwelling houses has been the paramount necessity. The growth and enterprise of the town is illustrated in its very efficient motorbus service. Four years ago Ene only communication with outlying districts was by slow cumbersome horse vehicles. To-day there are two lines of motor service to Dargaville, one to Waipu, and another (just announced), to run through to Auckland. Motor services connect both the western and north-eastern districts; and a regularly hourly and extra service of well-equipped powerful motorbuses runs between Whangarei and Kamo. Within the borough there is a regular service for the suburbs of Mairtown and Kensington at one end, and the hospital and Maunu at the other end. Another striking illustration of Northern progress is the jpcreaaing establishment of banking agencies all over the* peninsula. In Whangarei there are four important and representative banksNew Zealand, National, New South Wales, and Bank of Australasia — the buildings in which they are respectively housed being among the most substantial and commanding premises in the town. The manager of one of these institutions, appointed about a year ago, who has had a widely-travelled experience under the Southern Cross, said he had an impression that he was coming to an ordinary and successful and expanding bush township. He was agreeably surprised when he settled in Whangarei, and was, he said, amazed at the vast amount of business, and sound business too, that was put through. He thought the depression, common to the Dominion, had been very lightly felt in Whangarei,, owing to the conservative values that ruled in the North, and the comparatively small encumbrances upon property. He recognised that these were two outstanding features of the Northern situation. There had been no general inflation of values; and instead of the usual percentage of mortgages he found onefifth land two-fifths the more common maximum. To these facts, along with the versatality and wealth of the resources which the Whangarei and the Northern districts command, may be attributed the exceptionally sound foundations upon which the superstruction of its progress is being steadily built up by the alert enterprise of its public bodies, and the business foresight and courage of its farming and industrial population.