PHOTO
A boardwalk from St Clair to Lawyers Head, a walkway from St Clair to Tunnel Beach, and hot pools and year-round use at the St Clair Hot Salt Water Pool are all among the most popular community suggestions to date for Dunedin’s St Clair to St Kilda coastal plan.
Dunedin City Council infrastructure services committee chairman Jim O’Malley said nothing was off the table — but individual plans for the well-used stretch of Dunedin coastline needed to work together to create a long-term infrastructure vision for the council.
Cr O’Malley said the planning under way for the St Clair to St Kilda coast was "a positive example" of the work of council infrastructure services general manager Simon Drew.
Mr Drew was trying to ensure the council had consistent plans for a 30- or 40-year timeframe — and the council was "not forgetting that we agreed on this 10 years later and going off in another direction again".
"The area will have investment put in it, one way or another," Cr O’Malley said.
"What the engineers and the people that are doing the city work there want out of this [consultation] is they want to get a sense of where the community wants to go.
"But also it’s got to be in a cohesive and strategic manner rather than a whole lot of individual things strung together without talking to the other ones, if you know what I mean."
Public drop-in sessions have been rescheduled for the coastal plan.
After public meetings and other forms of community engagement were placed on hold in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, an online "ideas wall" was created to gather public feedback and the council extended consultation on the coastal plan.
The question that generated the most feedback in that forum asks users what they would like to see improved on the coast.
The top five answers are: building a boardwalk from St Clair to Lawyers Head; a large public domain on one of the Kettle Park fields; installing hot pools at the St Clair Hot Salt Water Pool and keeping it open year round; reintroducing native species to the area to protect the area’s dunes; and building a walkway from Second Beach to Tunnel Beach.
The top answer for how future generations could use the coast is a "managed retreat".
Council coastal specialist Tom Simons-Smith said the consultation would help create "a sustainable plan" for managing the coast from St Clair Headland to Lawyers Head.
Starting tomorrow, the council would host a series of public drop-in sessions on the plan at St Clair.
Before Covid-19, the council had planned to confirm a coastal plan by the end of the year.
Now consultation on management options — a second round of consultation — would run from September 1 before a final coastal plan was confirmed early next year.
Drop-in sessions
Public drop-in sessions at St Clair:
Friday, July 24 and Saturday, July 25
Friday, July 31 and Saturday, August 1
Friday, August 7, and Saturday, August 8
Friday, August 14 and Saturday, August 15
The drop-ins will be open from 10am to 2pm at the South Coast Board Riders Club, 1 Esplanade, St Clair.