Media Release
City Vision-Labour Councillors - Auckland City Council
For Immediate Release
Wednesday 9 July 2008

Councillors Urge Public to Have Their Say on Draft Aotea Square Design

Today two City Vision-Labour Auckland City Councillors attended a media briefing on the draft design for Aotea Square.  The design is available for public consultation from tomorrow (Thursday 10 July) and Councillors Leila Boyle and Graeme Easte urge people to have their say by the time the consultation period closes at 5pm on Friday 1 August.

Councillor Leila Boyle says "I urge the Auckland community to have a long, hard look at the $25 million design and I encourage people to give feedback to the council on how they would like this draft design to the public square in the heart of our city to change to reflect what they want."

Councillor Graeme Easte says "Although the Terry Stringer sculpture Mountain Fountain is proposed to be relocated closer to the Aotea Centre, this sole water feature doesn't do our city justice.  I think there should also be a water feature reflecting the three streams that originally met at the Aotea Square location to celebrate this important historical feature of our city."

Both councillors agree the plans presented to the media today are a huge improvement on the substandard low resolution one-pager in the June Arts, Culture and Recreation Committee meeting agenda papers and the higher resolution version provided at the meeting.

Councillor Boyle says "Time is short!  The public only have three weeks to comment and I hope lots of people do take this opportunity to have their say.  Time constraints mean we can't start from scratch but I am sure the people of Auckland can come up with some great ways to improve this draft design. 

"A couple of things which occur to me are that there seem to be no handrails on the many sets of stairs and there are no arms on the seating.  These features may limit usability by older and less physically able people.  I urge people to take a look and see if there are improvements that can be made, if indeed this redevelopment needs to occur at all," Councillor Boyle concludes.

ENDS

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