A VAST ENDOWMENT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18708, 14 May 1924, Page 12

A VAST ENDOWMENT.

HARBOUR BOARD'S PROPERTY ... S • ' : : I ORIGINALLY UNDER WATER. GREAT * POTENTIALITIES. "■ - ' v -y „r: , ' v=• -; " '. In its . "endowment of . reclaimed land, the Auckland Harbour Board < possesses property. of enormous and increasing value,' the revenue from which has been a very material 'factor in enabling the carrying out of the harbour•, improvement scheme that has 'made'. Auckland one of the best-equipped ports ■in the .' Southern Hemisphere. The acquisition .of this endowment is ''attributed by the board, in its official handbook, to the foresight. of its first chairman;;' Captain W. ; C. Daldy, who secured it as a grant from the Provincial ! Government of " Auckland. • Substantial'as is the present revenue, it is derived chiefly from 1 , the land reclaimed in comparatively recent*, years.. In course of time, however, on . the ( expiration of the leases now held on pepercorn rentals, of tiie blocks between Fort , Street " and Quay Street, . the \ income from .the'? whole endowment will be : enormously increased. This era will ; not begin to arrive lor twenty or thirty years to : come, but when it does come Auckland's harbour authority will probably be the wealthiest in the Dominion. .. .

The total extent of land reclaimed by the' board is 280 acres. . Of this, no«rever, the Government has taken, at the mere cost of reclamation, 172 acres In what was Mechanics' Bay, and between Customs and : Quay Streets, for railway and post office purposes, leaving ; : the board owner of 108 acres of actual endowment. There are at present ; about 38 acres, chiefly opposite the aforetime Freeman's Bay and in Mechanics' Bay and around the old graving dock site, still unleased. : V- V , • ;

The potential endowment, however, is of much greater extent than that now brought i into use When originally Granted by the ; Provincial , Government the endowment ■ was entirely under water.' and of a total extent of 5000 acres: On the south, or city, shore of the Waiternata, it extends from the Watchman, off." Ponsonby, to the ' uastion, and. far out into the harbour bed: and along the northern side it runs, also under'the harbour, from Kauri Point, above Chelsea, to opposite Devonport. It is well known that the Government has designs upon Hobson Bay for the purposes of the new railway route out of Auckland. Probably the limit of present reclamation opposite the city has been reached, as the policy of the board is in the direction of concentrating its wharfage. i accommodation opposite the areas now reclaimed and making no further •• encroachments upon the harbour channel..