Hospital Site Napier’s – Not Tourists’!

Below is my Letter to the Editor that appeared in the Hawke’s Bay Today this morning (Friday November 28 2014)

Napier's Hospital site - once a place for everyone may soon become a place for only tourists and the well-off.

Napier’s Hospital site – once a place for everyone may soon become a place for only tourists and the well-off.

“The Art Deco Trust says plans for a residential development on Napier’s old hilltop hospital site have neglected a major tourism opportunity for the city”

Here we go again… “Tourism, tourism, tourism, blah, blah, blah” Give us a break and please give someone other than the ADT a chance to speak!

Napier’s hospital site has NOTHING to do with tourists and EVERYTHING to do with Napier residents.

Many of us were born there, some of us died there and a great many more were treated there over the many years it was in operation.

It has links to the literal and figurative heart of Napier and its residents. It is NOT yet another gaudy trap for visitors to “ooh” and “aaah” from and at.

Certain “local leaders” need to take a step back and stop trying to turn everything about our city into something to be sold to short-staying tourists and start focusing on Napier’s residents who live here 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year – THEY bring far more to our city than any day-tripping, “cruise in, cruise out over the summer months” tourist ever could, so stop sucking up to this moneyed meandering minority!

Speaking of moneyed minorities, it would have been nice to see any housing development on the hospital site as something reasonable and affordable for local families, rather than even more apartments (have all the ones built in Ahuriri years ago sold yet?) and their “lavish,” “luxury living” subdivision.

The current plan not only gives a “two fingered salute” to the memory of Napier’s healthcare system but also to all us mere mortals, living on the surrounding plains, being looked down upon on from the hill-top heights of luxury.

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