POST OFFICE SITE

Taranaki Daily News, 17 October 1935, Page 4

POST OFFICE SITE

NEW PLYMOUTH MOVE MORE CENTRAL POSITION REPORTED TRANSACTION FINE PROPERTY INVOLVED Although no official confirmation of the fact is at the moment forthcoming the Taranaki Daily News understands that arrangements are practically completed for the purchase of a new post office site in New Plymouth in a central position at the intersection of Gill and Currie Streets. The property referred to is that of the Shaw estate, over half an acre in area, at the south-eastern corner of the intersection, and £lO,OOO is named as the figure involved in the transaction.

The exact area of the section referred to is 2 roods 11 perches, and as may be seen from the sketch plan published on another page is somewhat irregular in shape. The Currie Street frontage is approximately 150 feet, and the Gi Street frontage approximately 175 feet, the depth from Gill Street being 135 foot and from Currie Street 92 feet to the first corner. The Currie Street frontage extends to the block of small wooden buildings, the first of which is occupied by the Wood Sign firm, and on the Gill Street frontage the boundary is the property of Mr. Geo. Braund, cabinetmaker. Most of the section is at present covered by a two-storied wooden building which for many years served as the warehouse of Archibald Clark and Sons and is now partly occupied as a warehouse by Mr. R. T. McQuade. The other buildings on the area include the historic house in which Miss Lydia Shaw lived for many years. In facing the problem of congestion in the existing post office building, which at present is occupied by the post office and allied activities, telephone exchange, telegraph office, and Land and Survey Department, the Post and Telegraph Department has no doubt been influenced by recent agitation on the part of business men to have the post office in a more central position. Much of the agitation, which has found expression at meetings of the Taranaki Chamber of Commerce, has. come from business people in the eastern portion of the town, whither the business population has tended to spread rather than westwards. The first indication of the recognition of this desire by the department came in an address to the Chamber of Commerce on July 4 last by Mr. G. Macnamara, Director-General of the Post and Telegraph Department. Mr McNamara dealt chiefly with the question of an automatic telephone exchange, which he foreshadowed would probably take shape in about two year's. He also indicated, however, that owing to the congestion in the post office some rearrangement, possibly including a new post office somewhere else, would have to be made sooner or later. One of the effects of a post office on the site referred to would be the advantage of closer proximity to the Government stores, a building for which is shortly to be erected on a site a few chains away. When the matter of the reported transaction and rearrangement of offices was referred yesterday to the chief postmaster at New Plymouth, Mr. R. G- May, he said he was not in a position to make any statement at the present time.