SEAFRONT DEVELOPMENT

Taranaki Daily News, 21 October 1933, Page 6

SEAFRONT DEVELOPMENT

IMPRESSIONS OF A VISITOR TOWN’S LACK OF VISION ALLEGED. PARKS RECEIVE ALL ATTENTION. MARINE PARADE DESIRABLE. “You people of New Plymouth have powdered the scenic face of your pretty town on one sid« only!”. In this way an overseas visitor who has made a lengthy stay at New Plymouth, expressed himself in the course of an interview in which he stated that the town’s marine front had been seriously neglected and the expenditure devoted almost extensively, from his observations, on park areas.

Explaining himself more fully, the departing visitor gave it as his opinion that the seafront was the most important aspect of a town. Here there was health in the sea and sun bathing, and a place for complete relaxation without a need for excessive convention. In other words, it was the mecca of all, rich or poor, particularly those whose means precluded them seeking health and relaxation further afield.

He had nothing against the parks, he explained to an interviewer. They were lovely things, so lovely in fact that it took a person with a deep aesthetic sense to appreciate them fully. The fernery at Pukekura Park was as good as that in Kew Gardens, London. But the point in regard to parks was that after all they were not the places for complete relaxation of young and old, or, as he put it, a place for walking and .resting only, not to spend a bank holiday in the holiday spirit that a beach offered. There was decorum about parks —they were for the people, and yet not of them. PLACE FOR RELAXATION. The. beach and seafront generally was different; it was a place where all could relax and enjoy life. For this reason he regretted that the New Plymouth foreshore had not been developed apace with the parks. Bathing-shed facilities were poor. The walk from Kawaroa Park to the nearest convenient descent on to the beach past the oil weels was a dusty, dirty path that would encourage none. Furthermore, here were scattered ramshackle dwellings, many -tent and kero-sene-tin combinations, advertising distress to the visiting passer-by. Despite the comparative neglect of the seafront at this point the walk was a good one and deserved a dustless path to encourage its use. At the eastern end he admitted there were some facilities, but to his mind they had been only half done and it was left to a small band of enthusiasts to meet the need of thousands. A town’s beach was the point where visitors, whether for a day or a ijionth, all made for, and for this reason if for no other a really whole-hearted effort should be made, the visitor said. From photographs he had seen there were parts of the beach that had not changed in many years. This was a cause for regret, that he hoped would be remedied by the time he next hoped to visit New Plymouth.

The death of Mr. J. K. Collett, founder of the well-known firm of Collett, Whitefield and Co., Ltd., of England, recalls the visit to New Plymouth in 1905 of Mr. Collett, who, too, was greatly impressed with the future possibilities of the seafront as a marine parade. Mr. Collett, however, realised that the presence of the railway line right on the foreshore detracted very greatly from the possibilities of the town as a seaside resort A man of great vitality and enthusiasm for any project for civic betterment, he had plans prepared for a deviation of the railway line’ at Smart Road or close thereto around the back of the town to a station and thence to the port. This Mr. Collett believed would relieve the foreshore of the stranglehold of the railway and give full scope to his vision of New Plymouth with a magnificent marine parade, having all the cross streets running down to it. Mr. Collett prepared plans for the project and submitted them to the authorities before his return to England, but the idea was not proceeded with.