Piha folk still hope to save community-run post office

Jack Kingston

Residents who lost a battle to buy Piha's post office will now have to convince a group of businessmen, including television sports star Marc Ellis, to let it stay.

Telecom last week sold the land on which the post office building sits for what is believed to be about $400,000. The buyer was a company called Preserve Piha Ltd, in which Mr Ellis is an investor. Under the terms of the sale, the building must be moved by the middle of next month.

Eighty-eight-year-old Jack Kingston said he would miss catching up with neighbours if the community-run service closed but it was not typical of Telecom to "show a little bit of heart".

"I didn't expect Telecom to be generous. We are just small fry, but so is the amount of money they got for it," he said.

Telecom acquired the land in the 1980s but it is now surplus to requirements. It had an official value of $350,000.

The Piha Residents and Ratepayers' Association had taken over the running of the post office and owns the building, which formerly housed the local telephone exchange. It paid one staffer to run the service through revenue from Piha's 120 post boxes.

President Tony Dunn said the association tried to convince Telecom to lease the land or sell it through staged payments to the association, but was turned down.

It also tried to convince the company to sell it to a local buyer who promised to keep the service. But the company said old exchange sites were being sold off all over the country and it did not want to create a precedent.

Preserve Piha spokesman Andy Higgs said he hoped the service could stay but the ratepayers' association membership was not very high, nor representative of the Piha community as a whole.

"It's pretty old-school really," he said.

His company did not necessarily want the building removed and would look at keeping the service, particularly if the community supported future plans for the site.

It wanted to provide the popular west coast beach with a decent cafe.