Playground option for House of Horrors
A children's playground may go on the site where once stood the city's notorious House of Horrors.
The Burwood Pegasus Community Board recommended at its meeting on Monday that the site on the corner of Hampshire St and Wainoni Rd, Aranui, where Jason Somerville murdered his wife Rebecca and neighbour Tisha Lowry be purchased by the city council.
It will not say for how much.
The bodies of the women were discovered under floorboards of the Somerville unit in September 2009.
The unit and another one attached to it were later set alight by arsonists and eventually demolished.
Burwood-Pegasus Community Board member Tim Baker said the vacant land that has become overgrown and tagged could be turned into a children's playground.
But he accepted that getting the city council and others to agree to this could be difficult.
"Children might be aware that two ladies were killed there," he said.
The community board has recommended the city council buy the site as part of the Neighbourhood Parks Programme. They will consider it at a meeting on October 11.
City council spokeswoman Sue Chappell said there were no specific use or design in place for the land.
Mr Baker said if there was resistance to a children's playground on the Somerville site, it could go on land where the attached unit once was.
Mr Baker said consultation with the community would need to be occur before any decision were made around its use. The site has been a problem for both the owners and city council since the bodies were discovered.
It is on a cross lease section. The land where the Somerville's unit once was is now owned by Auckland-based Liberty Finance, and Jason Drain of Gisborne owns the part of the section where the other unit once was.
