Update on Whitianga Town Centre upgrade and new cemetery for Mercury Bay

New cemetery site for Mercury Bay gets official name

The new cemetery being built off SH25 in Whitianga is looking to be called "Kaimarama Cemetery," while the main internal road servicing the cemetery will be called Kiteroa Place.

The Mercury Bay Community Board agreed (subject to iwi approval) to suggestions by locals to the name Kaimarama, as this was the historic name iwi and early settlers of the district used for the area surrounding the cemetery site.

Meanwhile the name Kiteroa, means "long view" and is based on the view from the cemetery property back to Whitianga/Mount Maungatawhiri.

In February we started developing the second phase of the new cemetery site, which sits on 5.08ha of farmland, by sealing the main access road, a circular car park, an entranceway and berms for a section of up some burial plots.

The new cemetery won't be up and running within the next 12 months, but we need to have it prepared as the existing Ferry Landing cemetery will be reaching capacity for burial sites in the next few years.

The cemetery also hosts one of our WWI Memorial Forest sites - this one paying tribute to not only the 37 men from Mercury Bay who were killed in the Great War, but the more than 2,000 New Zealand soldiers who fell in the Battle of Passchendaele in 1917. A representative 2,000 native trees is being planted at the cemetery to commemorate all these men. For more information on the WWI Memorial Forest see our web page www.tcdc.govt.nz/ww1memorialforest.

The budget for Stage Two is $487k and will be completed by April 2017.

Pre-sales of burial spots at the new cemetery site are not being taken right now, for more information visit www.tcdc.govt.nz/mbcemetery.

Whitianga Town Centre upgrade update

In the past couple of weeks we've been meeting with property and business owners on Albert St, Whitianga's main street, to provide more detailed information about the construction timelines and design plans for the first stage of the town centre upgrade.

The project has now been broken down into two stages rather than three. Stage One will be the upgrade of Albert St (from Hannan Rd to Campbell St) including a plaza on Taylor's Mistake.
Stage Two will be from the plaza, down and along Taylor's Mistake, the Esplanade to the Wharf.

Now that we also have more accurate costing for the work the Community Board has agreed to a $720,000 variance, which is within the planned contingencies for the project budget. This budget will now go to Council for sign off at its next meeting in early April.

Stage One of the Town Centre Upgrade project will be constructed over the 2017 calendar year (2016/17 and 2017/18 financial years) and Stage Two in the 2018 calendar year (2017/18 and 2018/19 financial years). The total funding required for the project is $6,478,168, which includes renewal of much of the underground services. Of this $3,465,000 has been provided for in our 2015-25 Long Term Plan, our 2017-18 Annual Plan, with a District Funding component planned for under Infrastructure budgets. Of the balance a significant proportion has been planned for funding from existing Mercury Bay budgets.

For more information on the Town Centre project go to http://www.tcdc.govt.nz/whiticentreupgrade.

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