Election day, Saturday 17 October arrived fine and clear. Good for voter turnout and equally good for our latest Community-Led Design (CLD) event.
As the start of work on Ponsonby Park has been temporarily delayed due to budgetary constraints caused by Covid-19, we decided to have an on-site engagement with the community. This was to update people and reassure them that Ponsonby Park will progress soon.
It was a great day and an enjoyable opportunity to re-engage with our ongoing and enduring community supporters.
The main question most people wanted answered was “when will it happen?”
Happily, we were able to reassure people that Ponsonby Park, the new civic space at 254 Ponsonby Road, is still the Waitemat-a Local Board’s ‘One Local Initiative’ project, and that the Waitemat-a Local Board has “confirmed that proceeds from the sale of a commercial building at 200 Victoria Street go to fund the Ponsonby Park project at 254 Ponsonby Road and urged [the Governing Body] that that project only be delayed by a year.”
We are very appreciative of the Waitemat-a Local Board’s ongoing support and advocacy work for Ponsonby Park on behalf of our community, as well as visitors from wider Auckland and beyond.
Our event ran from 10am - 1.30pm. We tempted people with delicious Allpress biscotti – chocolate biscuits and gluten free pistachio (yum!). And we handed out flyers with an update of the work our CLD group has been doing to progress Ponsonby Park this year.
Additionally we completed some ‘springtime maintenance’ by replanted our wine barrels that sit in front of our CLD noticeboard, as well as the corner garden. Nice.
We also let people know that we are hoping to reconnect with our ‘Valentine’s Day people’ (see the image below). The very first event our CLD group held was on 14th February 2016, Valentine’s Day. We wrote this up for the Ponsonby News and published the photo below of our young supporters. We’d like to reconnect with them again, to see what they’re up to all these years later.
So, if this is you, or someone you know, please have them contact us via our webpage www.254ponsonbyrd.org.nz/contact.
Or send a message via the Facebook page ‘Ponsonby Park’. And of course, you can keep up to date by checking both of these digital sites out for further information.
Ponsonby Park, it’s going to be brilliant - bring it on! (JENNIFER WARD)