The $600,000 Victorian-themed Tourism Waitaki and Oamaru Whitestone Civic Trust tourism attraction has been under construction, and tightly under wraps, since spring last year when it failed to meet its initial November opening date.
But yesterday, Mr Gaskill confirmed both the name Whitestone City and a May opening for the attraction he said would parallel the success of the Oamaru Blue Penguin Colony.
Both attractions offered a "concentrated snapshot" of what some visitors to the area wanted.
"You want to come here and you want to experience heritage, here’s a really cool snapshot. Come in, get a bit and then go and see everything."
Visitors to Whitestone City would be encouraged to take snapshots of everything they saw. Rather than seeing items behind glass, visitors would interact with the guides and displays.
Visitors entering Whitestone City would be treated as if they had just arrived off a boat in the harbour two or three decades after the first Europeans arrived in Oamaru. At the Victorian reception, they would be given passports with which they could enter a short mall containing a general store, a barber shop and a doctor’s office. A pennyfarthing carousel would spin in the centre of the building and visitors would explore a schoolroom, a bar or brothel, a dressing area — about half a dozen themed areas. Although the experience was intended to be "more symbolic than historically accurate", replica profiles of about 40 of Oamaru’s first European settlers hang in one room. The entrance, off what had until the recent past been treated as a service lane, meant visitors would be "released" into historic Harbour St. In addition, Whitestone City’s parlour, or bar area, and the sitting room in the Harbour St side of the building could be used to hold events.
