Whairepo Lagoon
along the Wellington waterfront
Whairepo Lagoon is an open public area on the waterfront of Wellington, New Zealand. It is a small man-made sea water lagoon connected to Wellington Harbour through a narrow channel.
Land between Queens Wharf and Taranaki Street Wharf on the Wellington waterfront was reclaimed from 1969, allowing creation of Frank Kitts Park and Whairepo Lagoon and closing in the landward side of Taranaki Street Wharf. In 1989, two historic rowing club buildings, the Star Boating Club and Wellington Rowing Club, were moved to the reclaimed area adjacent to Whairepo Lagoon. Te Wharewaka o Pōneke was built on reclaimed land immediately to the south of the two rowing club buildings and was officially opened at a dawn ceremony on Waitangi Day, 6 February 2011.
A split-level footbridge over the mouth of the lagoon was designed by Eastbridge. The lagoon is surrounded by the City-to-Sea bridge, the Wellington Rowing, Star Boating Club, and Te Wharewaka o Pōneke buildings. Tanya Ashken's Albatross fountain sits on the north side of the lagoon between it and Frank Kitts Park.
On 17 December 2015 the lagoon was officially named Whairepo Lagoon, as it previously had no official name. The lagoon was previously referred to as Frank Kitts Lagoon, Frank Kitts Park Lagoon or simply The Lagoon.
“Whairepo Lagoon” enters the record as along the Wellington waterfront. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Whairepo, Lagoon and along can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7745216. Authority coordinates are -41.289, 174.779. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1969, 1989, 2011 and 2015.
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This entry incorporates text from “Whairepo Lagoon” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.