Welcome to the third edition of the Gazette – the paper everyone’s talking about
Gazette The Isle of Wight
Friday August 29 2008
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Reach for the sky
Inside today’s
Gazette Mountain to climb
Will’s heady challenge
PAGE 4
Saucy but nice
PILOTS and businesspeople who use the IW Airport, Sandown, are preparing for a prolonged dogfight to prevent the site from being developed.
They fear the current owners, a development company with offices in Jersey and London who paid £3,057,500, has a target date of 2010 to close the airport.
There are conflicting reports about what Sandown IW Airport Ltd hopes to build. Islanders believe it could be homes but the agent for the owners, Wharf Land Investments, talked this week about a covered, high-quality leisure park. People opposing any change of use have strong points in their favour.
They say the land is covenanted to be an airstrip always and the covenant has been tested in the courts; a report commissioned by IW Council from Terence O’Rourke said there should only be development around the airstrip and not ON it. Until the Aviator Bar was destroyed by fire last New Year’s
Eve, the strip was one of the most popular destinations on the south coast for private flyers. On one busy Sunday a few years ago more than 160 aircraft flew in. And this week Island MP Andrew Turner said he believed the airfield should continue to be used for recreational flying. Mr Turner added: “We should
always bear in mind the possibility of a commercial operation starting up again in the future.” Opponents are also puzzled how the O’Rourke report was translated in the IW Council IW Plan as favouring quality leisure development ON the airfield. When they came to power in 2005, the Conservatives on IW
Continues page 2
Islanders a bit prudey
PAGE 5
The beat
Walkers smash record WALK the Wight has raised a re- enough of all the people involved.” cord £314,000 – £74,000 more than And the news get betters as, last week, last year – for the Earl Mountbatten readers of the Gazette gave £1,000 in Hospice and money is still coming. donations as they picked up their free
The 10,000 walkers and their sponsors have delighted hospice fundraisers with their efforts and generosity. David Cheek, of the hospice, said: “The walk is our biggest fundraising event of the year and so we always hope it will do well. “But this year we have made more than we expected and we cannot thank
copy of the newspaper. The paper has set a target of £50,000 for the year. People who have not given their money for Walk the Wight should go to and Island branch of HSBC bank or the hospice fundraising office. See pages 4 and 8.
Operation clean up
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