Ponsonby Park is the working title of the new civic space at 254 Ponsonby Road - currently the Liquor King site. The land was purchased by Council in 2006 after the ‘Ponsonby Open Space Study’ completed in 2000 by Boffa-Miskell Ltd, identified a lack of urban open space in the area.
In 2015 the Waitemat-a Local Board initiated a Community-Led Design (CLD) process to build on the community engagement that had sought to create a whole of site park on the land. The CLD group was tasked with delivering a design with an indicative budget and this resulted in the (international award winning) LandLAB Park+ design, as illustrated on this page.
Ponsonby Park is the Waitemat-a Local Board’s priority capital project, aka ‘One Local Initiative’ project (OLI). Each local board is able to submit one project to Council that they would otherwise be unable to fund themselves.
Ponsonby Park as the Waitemat-a Local Board’s OLI was scheduled to obtain funding approval at the Finance and Performance Committee meeting on Thursday 19 March, 2020. However, the published agenda was set aside in order to address the implications of the Covid-19 outbreak and no funding allocations were progressed.
Council has since been working on a new Long Term Plan (Recovery Budget) which at the time of writing, had not been yet been formalised.
On 29 June 2021, the Governing Body is scheduled to approve the final 10-year Budget 2021-2031. The 10-year Budget 2021-2031 becomes operational on 1 July 2021, the first day of their new financial year.
The Waitemat-a Local Board has continued their strong advocacy work to Council for Ponsonby Park as their OLI project. Once again, they have taken into account the views expressed by the community through the submission process to ensure this long-awaited and much needed community project is delivered as soon as possible. So we are optimistic, and we look forward to the progression of Ponsonby Park, once the final 10-year Budget 2021-2031 is approved.
The vision for Ponsonby Park has always been for a place where people gather to rest, relax, and recreate - a place to meet new people or to catch up with old friends or simply to spend some time to chill and take a moment. We all need to be able to come together, to have the common ground and public spaces where both optimism and resilience can be nurtured and sustained.
Ponsonby Park is this place. (JENNIFER WARD)
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