Marine Centre muck up?
23/08/2006 12:00:00 a.m.
THE public has been misled about the size of the proposed Marine Education Centre, according to opponents of the project.
Gary McGivney this week told commissioners assessing the proposal that the scale model displayed in Readings, photos of which were widely published in the media and broadcast on television, showed the aquarium to be smaller than it will actually be.
"The model is not scaled properly. The building will have a much bigger footprint on the [Te Raekaihau] point," McGinvey says.
The aquarium project exceeds the maximum building size for the area under the District Plan by more than 70 times, McGivney says.
McGivney and the residents group Save the Point oppose building the Marine Education Centre on Te Raekaihau Point as the area is one of the few remaining stretches of undeveloped coastline in Wellington.
At the hearing, he questioned claims by the Marine Education Centre Trust that Te Raekaihau Point is the only possible site for the aquarium.
"One [aquarium] already exists, and is successfully operating at this moment out of the Island Bay Bait Shed. Before it took up residence there, it operated for seven years out of the Marine Laboratory near Owhiro Bay," he says.
The hearing is expected to finish in mid-September.
