Weekly column by Kāpiti Mayor K. Gurunathan.
This morning, at the Electra Business Breakfast, advocates for the continuation of the Kāpiti Coast Airport will launch their vision for its future. Kāpiti Air Urban is fronted by some highly successful thinkers with proven business credentials. They will not only be talking about the future of aviation, but a development that retains a functioning airport, a supporting technology hub for high-value jobs, and surplus land accommodating housing within a natural environment that will preserve and enhance valuable wetlands. Councillors were given a first look at this vision at a confidential briefing recently. In terms of what is possible, it is an impressive vision that could potentially breathe new life into this privately owned "community asset".
Let me go back to another meeting, at 4pm on August 6 last year. That's when the new owners of Kāpiti Coast Airport, the Templeton Group, had a meeting in my office. I got a clear impression that the zoning status of the airport on their block of land was a millstone around their company neck in terms of its alternative potential for residential and commercial development.
Perfectly understandable. The owner came with a reputation for high-quality residential development. I made an observation and a challenge. I noted the deep historical community attachment to the airport and said that for any hope of dislodging this sentiment of it being "our airport", the Templeton Group have to present our communities with a vision that "will blow our socks off".
Since then, as the airport issue became more controversial, I had directly, and publicly in this column, also challenged the Save the Airport advocates that they needed a counterfactual response — their own vision for the airport and its relevance to our communities.