Need For Major Housing Plan Emphasised

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27241, 18 November 1949, Page 6

Need For Major Housing Plan Emphasised

Industrial development must increase in Otago as a result of the completion of the Roxburgh Gorge hydro-electric power station, but what pas urgently needed in the province was a major housing construction scheme, said the Mayor of Mosgiel, Mr W. P. Hartstonge, at the annual meeting of the Otago Development Council yesterday afternoon. Mr Hartstonge said that industry would follow the provision of housing.

Mr Hard stonge expressed the opinion that therra was a limit to the expansion of primary production in Otago, owing to the of second and thirdclass lanrj, and the council would have to promt) te industrial development. The speak er said that members of the council U light feel some disappointment that) more had not been achieved by the cq uncil in the past year, but this was ian age of frustration. He believed, i howtever, that the council shoulfl persist in its efforts to achieve results ofi benefit to Otago.

I Air Services The Development Council and other organisations had put in many hours of work in an endeavour to have the Central q tago air service established; and Aleyjjindra had now been fixed as the terminal, said the acting chairman, Mr A. S. ’Falconer, when proposing the adoption,- of the annual report. Mr Falconer said he hoped that the service wcKild be supported and would prove profitable so.that it might be extended! to Queenstown and perhaps Wanaka.j He hoped the service would be suoc< bssful commercially and from the toui|ist aspect. <

“At p resent this is the only organisation of its kind in Otago which has a visioti embracing the .commercial, tourist find travel requirements of the province,” Mr Falconer said. He believed t.fcat the council’s continued existence fvould be of benefit to. the city and prejvince. Only the surface had been scratched when it came to the development of the hinterland of Otago. , The Roxburgh Gorge scheme should /advance primary productivity by leajjis. and bounds, while other major schemes—such as in the Maniototo—slfould increase production and be of a-fivantage to Dunedin, The president of the Otago Expansion League, Mr G. J. Errington, seconding the adoption of the report, said th# at the suggestion of the Development Council, the league had gone iusto the matter of urgent publicity f<m the province and its publicity booklet ?was under reconstruction. The league also planning a major publication,k but that would take time “Our major work must be the industrial! development of Otago,” Mr Errington said, “and that will be the main activity for the future. I hope our efforts will be more successful than in the past.”