Anyone who has lived in or just known Whitianga for a while will remember how the southern entrance to the town used to be. The highway turned right at where there is now the Moewai Road intersection, and every resident and visitor was forced to drive through and experience what most would consider was one of New Zealand’s uglier small town industrial areas.
Then in 2003, as a key part of the Waterways development, the current bypass was built, and since then everyone has travelled past the airport and along Joan Gaskell Drive to get to town.
Absolutely wonderful – with the functional ugliness of industry now hidden down what had become a side road, Whitianga’s entrance was transformed. It was a very pleasant transition from countryside to the town’s centre and the beauty of the estuary and the Bay.
At about the same time as the bypass was built, land down Moewai Road, was zoned for industrial expansion. Today, even though the few businesses at the state highway intersection are now showing their less pleasant faces and the airport view is becoming a parade of billboards, the ugliness of industry remains reasonably discreet and largely hidden from us locals and the town’s visitors.
A trend is happening to change the landscape
I fear this is all about to change. Rather than industry expanding down the side road, Moewai Road, a trend seems to be developing of allowing industry out into the country south along SH25.
Although the zoning for all this land is rural and industrial development is a non-complying activity, permission has already been granted for various industrial developments – 38 public storage units on one property, 76 on another and on a number of other blocks, single ‘storage’ units being used for a variety of industrial type activities.
Council planners decided, when they considered all these applications, that these developments be not publicly notified. In other words, they decided that the public should not be told about them and that you should not have a say on how they could possibly affect your town. Their approvals were made on evidence and opinion, principally from experts employed by the landowner applicants. All of these decisions have set precedent and are creating a cumulative effect.
Right now there is a proposal on the table for a Waste Management truck and machinery yard facing onto the main highway into town. It is currently the subject of a pre-application meeting with Council planners. It is interesting that since I emailed Council about it, the documents detailing the proposal have been removed from Council’s publicly accessible website ‘Consent Tracker’.
There are many questions that I think we as a community (Whitianga and the wider Coromandel area), should be asking Council and ourselves. Do we want the ugliness of industry to be the entrance to our town? Are we accepting of the possibility that in time, industry could take over the rural flats right through to the 309 intersection, and beyond?
Do we think town planning should be on an ad hoc basis as is happening in this situation, or should there be carefully considered zones? There’s lots of land down Moewai Road that could provide for further industry.
We need to be thinking about the beauty of our countryside and towns. How important is it for tourism, our principal industry? In England, I was impressed by the many picturesque villages on highways that remain unspoiled because their industrial estates and modern housing areas are hidden (and discretely signposted) down side roads.
We need to be asking how important is this beauty, that we live within and usually take for granted, for each of us individually?
Is this issue of industry creeping into the countryside and ‘uglifying’ the entrance to our town important enough to stand up and protest what Council seems to be allowing to happen?
How ugly is a truck yard going to be at the entrance to the town? Will it set a precedent for worse?
