NEW CITY STREETS

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 76, 21 June 1927, Page 13

NEW CITY STREETS

SHORTLAND ST. POST OFFICE COUNCIL AND GOVERNMENT The City Council decided over two years ago to proceed with the preliminaries necessary in taking over the old Shortland Street Post Office, with the idea of connecting Shortland and Fort Streets by means of a thoroughfare over the site of the post office. The council's estimation of the value of the property was over £IOO,OOO, but the Post and Telegraph Department considered that the value was over twice that amount. The proposal had therefore to go to arbitration. It is now possible that some arrangement will be made by which the deal will be settled by exchanges of property, and that the city will thereby be saved a huge expenditure. The Mayor, Mr. G. Baildon, has just returned from Wellington, where he has been conferring with the Prime Minister and the Hon. K. S. Williams. Minister of Public Works, on a suggestion that the Government should hand over a strip of some 40 feet enabling a road to be built, and leaving sufficient pace for the Government to reconstruct and make available offices for several of its departments, the council giving in return properties in either one or more places in Chancery Lane, High Street and Anzac Avenue. The Government required land in Anzac Avenue, near the Supreme Court, for the building of a new law library. The Ministers promised Mr. Baildon to secure an early report on the suggestions.