Lights on in City Focus

New lighting and wooden cladding will be added to the two remaining pillars in the City Focus.

Work continues on the refresh of Rotorua's City Focus with the refurbishment of the two remaining pillars in the central city.

According to Rotorua Lakes Council strategy project manager ​​​Niki Carling, work on the two pillars in the City Focus began on Monday with each of them being re-clad in wood and lit up as part of a staged refresh.

This part of the project is expected to take about six weeks, weather permitting, and will be isolated to the area where the pillars are located.

The City Focus will remain accessible to the public and there will be no need for road closures.

The work will involve erecting scaffolding around the pillars, removal of the polystyrene caps from the tops of pillars, and a strip and repaint.

New steel foundations around the pillars will be built, then locally-sourced timber cladding will be put up.

The last step wil be to install down lights at the top of each pillar.

Ms Carling said the work site could be noisy at times, but all efforts would be made to keep any inconvenience to a minimum with work times restricted to between 7am and 10pm daily.

The Rotorua Farmers Market - held every Sunday from 9am to 1pm - will still be on during this time with stalls to be arranged around the work site.

The council has budgeted between $1 million and $1.2m for the entire project that will see the Focus opened up to through traffic with new plaza-style landscaping.