Christmas in the Park 2018 to be scaled down event series in Tauranga CBD

The crowd at Tauranga Christmas in the Park in 2015, held in Blake Park. Photo/Andrew Warner

Tauranga's Christmas in the Park will be scaled down, split into a series of events and relocated to the CBD as a one-off this year.

Event organisers have said Mount Maunganui's Blake Park, the usual venue for the flagship community Christmas concert in recent years, was not available this summer so they will be trying something different.

Tauranga City Council parks and reserves manager Mark Smith said major work was due to start at Blake Park next month to rebuild fields two and three.

He said the council had been working with event organisers for two years on other options for Christmas in the Park. The fields were due to reopen for use in April 2019.

The news came after the announcement that Pāpāmoa's Christmas Parade will be held every second year instead of annually, alternating with a new Christmas carnival - the first of which will be held on December 16.

Christmas in the Park event organiser Rachelle Duffy of Little Big Events said her team was working with Tauranga City Council to bring a smaller scale version of the Christmas in the Park concert to the Our Place container village in the CBD on December 8.

It would be complemented by a series of other festive events spread through the month under an Our Christmas banner.

Duffy said those events would include the traditional Christmas Parade, a Māori cultural performance, a meal for the city's homeless, a fill-the-bus charity collection and a Santa's Grotto - manned once a week by Father Christmas himself.

"We will still be doing all the things people expect from Christmas in the Park.

"There will be more stuff instead of just one big event, so there will be more opportunities for people to take part."

She said the concert event would still have "exciting" headline acts of the same calibre as previous Christmas in the Park events, though the acts themselves were yet to be confirmed.

Tiki Taane, Anika Moa, Hollie Smith, Dave Dobbyn and Avalanche City have previously performed.

She said while this year was a one-off, it did present an opportunity to trial some new ideas and potentially bring more Christmas festivities to the CBD in the future.

Duffy said there would be more announcements about the plan in the coming weeks.