LOGAN PARK.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19204, 21 June 1924, Page 8

LOGAN PARK.

[t is very satisfactory to know that the Harbour Board and the Education Board are likely to come to an amicable arrangement, without any detriment to wider interests, respecting the question of a site for a new school to replace that at Albany street. The negotiations between the City Council and the Harbour Board regarding the Logan Park area have fortunately reached a stage that promises the utilisation of the whole of the area—sixty acres odd—by the city as a permanent recreation reserve. It was obvious, however, that in order to carry out its part of the arrangement with the City Council, the Harbour Board had to discover a satisfactory alternative to its earlier decision to let the Education Board have eight acres of the Logan Park area for the purposes of a school site. The plan which the Harbour Board has devised in this connection has been disclosed in its offer to the Education Board of a site opposite the Pelichet Bay Railway Station and fronting the highway that is projected when the railway deviation has been accomplished. The attitude of the Education Board had hitherto not encouraged the idea that it would be content with anything but a generous slice of Logan Park. It is the more welcome, therefore, to find it in a different mood—a fact to which a strong expression of public opinion on the matter may have contributed not less than the excellence of the offer now made by the Harbour Board, It did seem quite unthinkable that the one plan by which the best may be made of the Logan Park area as a civic asset of magnificent possibilities should be liable to be frustrated over the question of a site for a Government school.' It is to be hoped now that there will be uo further controversy on the subject. The reception which members of the Education Board accorded to the Harbour Board’s offer at their meeting on Thursday is of very good augury. We trust that there will he no hitch about the conclusion of a settlement that will clear the way for the pursuance by the municipal authority of a policy which should make capital of the possibilities of Logan Park as the city’s most extensive playground in the near future. The terms upon which the City Council contemplates taking over the Park are irreconcilable with the alienation of any portion of the area. The construction of the projected highway to the Park is dependent upon the sanction by the ratepayers of a loan providing for the necessary expenditure. No stronger inducement could be offered to the ratepayers to authorise the loan than that prompted by the knowledge that the whole area of the Park will become a public park for all time.