Initial AGM, 26 July 2012. Recliffs Bowling Club

Widespread community support for the Christchurch Coastal Pathway continues unabated, with over 80 people packing out the Redcliff’s Bowling Club for the inaugural AGM on Thursday 26th July.

As guest speaker, Grant Porteous, planning director behind the creation of the New Plymouth Coastal Walkway, spoke about the significant economic, social and cultural benefits of that city’s pathway. Porteous attributed much of the initiative’s success to the common alignment of elected members, staff and residents, in a shared vision. His personal passion for the project shone through his talk, driving the path’s development from a germ of an idea while lunching on the rocky foreshore to a concrete path used by over 50,000 people a month in the summertime. The New Plymouth Coastal Walkway provides a useful working model for the Christchurch Coastal Pathway given both paths span approximately six kilometers in length.

A full committee was elected at the AGM, with Linda Rutland, continuing as chair.
“Support for the Christchurch Coastal Pathway and interest in our group’s activities continues to grow,” said Rutland. “Once word got around about what we want to achieve our meetings have quickly grown from a small group to one where each meeting more and more people come to contribute. We currently have an advisory group of 25, which includes a city planner, a tourism analyst, health professionals, roading engineers, architects, landscape architects and lawyers. Several thousand have signed up to our vision and we have recruited 150 members. This has been a wonderful project to work on. Thank you all for your support so far.”

Published on Thursday, July 26th, 2012, under News