Town plan funding case put

The Mahurangi Community Planning Group (MCPG) is working to secure $100,000 from the Rodney Local Board (RLB) to prepare a new town plan for Warkworth.

Chair Pete Sinton says securing funding is critical to continuing the planning work that started with Bowls Warkworth.

“The money’s the key to it, because if we don’t have some seeding money now, then we can’t engage the right people,” he says.

Sinton said the funding request had been lodged with the RLB, which had previously funded a town centre plan that did not proceed.

RLB member Colin Smith said the board had already paid $100,000 for an outside consultant to come up with the Warkworth Town Centre Plan. He felt such money would have been better spent locally (MM, Dec 5).

However, Sinton said the last exercise was done wrong.

Sinton told a MCPG meeting on February 4 that the funding was needed to engage professional planners and develop a community-led vision for the town centre.

He said initial planning discussions about the town centre were held without public involvement due to commercial sensitivity and time pressures, but community engagement was always intended as the process progressed.

Sinton said initial planning work had focused on Warkworth Bowls.

MCPG paid for concept designs to illustrate alternatives to a proposed retirement complex on Bowls Warkworth land put forward by The Oaks (MM, Mar 14).

Sinton said members had already donated countless hours of time, energy and expertise on issues affecting Warkworth, most of which had been necessitated by private plan changes.

“It required urgent attention to ensure that this site and two other adjacent sites could be more appropriately developed in a manner that would benefit the entire centre, as decisions affecting the land were already underway.

“We actually achieved a quite bit in a very short time, something like five months.”

Sinton described the work completed so far as an early stage of a longer planning process.

“I would say we’re less than 10 per cent through the work that is needed for the development of the town.”

The MCPG plan for the wider town centre will include parking, accommodation, riverside development and retaining its historic character, he said.

An update on the funding request is expected at the RLB meeting on March 18.