A 29 March 2017 update on Waitoetoe Park has been provided by Jason Pilkington, Leisure Assets Planner for PNCC. His communication is copied below.

As you will be aware Palmerston North City Council and the local community/interested parties at Waitoetoe Park have been engaged in the creation of a Reserve Development Plan for Waitoetoe Park.

The first step in the development of this plan has been to engage with the community in order to better understand what the community desires for this area.

Progress to date

We have:

1. Held four Focus Groups with interested parties
2. Held a community picnic and BBQ at the park
3. Completed extensive on-site surveys
4. Workshopped with Riverdale School children
5. Used social media to reach people
6. Engaged with Rangitāne
7. Achieved a wide-ranging local mail drop and recived more than 100 cmpleted surveys from this method of engagement
8. Accepted emails, phone calls, etc. From peolpe wanting to talk about the park and give us their ideas

The engagement was very successful and I’d like to thank all those who took time out of their busy lives to be part of this process.

We have used a variety of methods to engage with people in order to hear from as many interested people as possible, and believe that this has been highly beneficial.

Please find attached the engagement results.

We are now heading into the design phase of this process. Next Steps are:

1. We have engaged Shannon Bray Ltd. to work with us to develop a Development Plan for the park, based on the results from the attached document. Shannon is an accomplished landscape architect and President of the New Zealand Institute of Landscape Architects.
2. We have identified a representative group of key stakeholders to engage with Shannon on site. In this way the strong community support we have received will continue as a Working Party that will engage with Shannon through the process. (April/May 2017)
3. Once the working party has achieved a basic design, Shannon will put this into a visual plan for the site. (May 2017)
4. This plan will then go to Council with a recommendation to go out to the community for a more formal consultation (June 2017 Sport and Recreation Committee is what we’re aiming for).
5. Council will then hear comments/objections to the draft, and develop a final plan.
6. A final plan will be adopted.
7. Work should begin on this park this financial year (June 2017), given that Council has budgets for the work that is identified coming online this year.

If you have any further enquiries please do not hesitate to contact me.

Regards

Jason