The man who led the revitalisation of Auckland's central city waterfront by attracting more than $1 billion of investment says Tauranga needs to come together as a community if it has any hope of changing things.
Panuku Development Auckland's interim chief executive John Dalzell offered his vision of how lessons gained from Auckland could be applied to Tauranga's CBD at a lunchtime presentation at Macau on The Strand today.
Mr Dalzell, who headed Waterfront Auckland before it was merged into the council-controlled urban regeneration agency, has been invited to speak by Tauranga mayoral candidate Max Mason.
Mr Dalzell said there was a lot of talk about a variety of things such as the city centre development ''but how do you get people to engage in that?''
''They got lots of experts from around the world when doing Auckland. to draw on, but really, it's only the local community who can do that - take this message and apply it to the loval environment.''