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Support grows for new Waitangi Visitor CentrePosted 3 April 2008 As more and more new Zealanders and overseas visitors have sought us out, with visitors now exceeding 200,000 per year, it has become very clear that our duties as hosts, educators and guardians do require a major investment in new facilities. Our thriving education programme alone, mostly for schools, requires vast improvement and modernisation of the teaching and exhibition facilities, well beyond the restraints of our crowded existing support buildings and their outdated 1970s facilities. A community consultation process has led to the plans for the exciting new visitor centre. The full, proposed plans are available for inspection at the Treaty Grounds and at the main Far North District Council offices. To ensure that those unable to travel to view them do still have accurate information, we have summarised the professional design reports here so you can see some of the detail. Some draft plan images are also available to you as a PDF file. There is also a link to the council’s site where the full application for resource consent may be viewed. This has every detail and illustration currently prepared, and is very comprehensive. We are aware of the duty entrusted to us by Lord and Lady Bledisloe to preserve the historic precinct, and to retain its appeal and relevance to all New Zealanders. We also have a special care to encourage unbiased education about the Treaty and its signing. The new life breathed into the myriad cultural presentations and performances here over the last few years has added to the need for better performance spaces for our young, and respected older presenters, composer/performers and oral historians who have found and fashioned a new forum here for the stories of who we are, in the place where our nation was born. It is all part of the wider duty entrusted to us to provide a place of “historic interest, recreation, enjoyment and benefit in perpetuity to the inhabitants of New Zealand” as cited in the Trust Deed. The new building is sophisticated and environmentally benign. It is quite deliberately sited off the actual historic precinct, and is even designed to tuck into the natural contours of the land, its roofline remaining below road level. Further plantings and a wetland area will keep it quite separate and enhance its aesthetic, with trees also breaking up its low-profile outline when seen from the bay. Every care is being taken to ensure it does not detract from the aesthetic of the coast, but rather complements its surroundings. We certainly wish to encourage your comment, and so invite you to thoroughly examine the documents on-line and send us your suggestions for improvements.
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