An indicative concept design for the city centre revamp. Photo / Supplied
A plan for the "absolutely critical" revamping Tauranga's city centre has been approved, with an estimated $2 billion in developments in the works.
The "high-level" City Centre Action and Investment Plan presents "the key actions [Tauranga City Council] will take with [its] partners over the next 10 years to continue revitalising our city centre".
Commissioners adopted it in a meeting on Monday, and the council released a video describing its "vision" soon after.
The plan references "over $2 billion in committed investment" in the city centre.
This covered $370 million in "local government investment", $180 million in "central government investment", and $1.5 billion in "private investment".
Council-led projects included the $303 million civic precinct development the council approved in May, of which ratepayers were expected to pay about $70m, with most of the rest expected to come from grants and asset recycling.
The plan covers the area from Otamataha and the Elms to Third Avenue, including the city centre commercial area and the waterfront.
It will divide the city centre into eight "precincts"; cultural and historical, justice, waterfront and taumata kahawai, sports and events, civic, retail and commercial, knowledge, and mixed-use.
Some of the plan's goals:
•A new community stadium (subject to business case results)
•A new courthouse
•Better public transport services (including a "simple and legible" bus route)
•Te Hononga ki Te Awanui/Memorial Pathway
•Replacing waterfront parking with "an extended waterfront park and events space"
•Lighting plan for the waterfront, including lighting the harbour bridge and/or Matapihi Rail Bridge
•Upgrading and remediating wharves for commerce and recreation
•Reopening the Cargo Shed for community/commercial activities
•Attracting a grocery store
•A north/south walking route to key central destinations
•Temporary and permanent street closures
•Short-term parking enhancements to support retail precinct access
•A programme of art, sculpture, interpretation and wayfinding to elevate "the visibility and tangibility of Māori history"
Commission chairwoman Anne Tolley said during the meeting the plan was" the revitalisation of the centre of Tauranga City, and that's absolutely critical".
"It's important that we have a cohesive centre for this great city.
"The private sector is also coming to the party and investing."
She said when the council was consulting on the civic precinct, most people wanted to know how it would fit into the city centre as a whole.
"This is the completed plan that answers all those questions. It's going to be really interesting, I think, to see how the community reacts to this."
She said there were "significant changes" proposed, including "focusing on people".
"That's a change from the last 50 years when city centres have been developed around cars and parking."
Commissioner Stephen Selwood said when he arrived in Tauranga, he saw a city focused on "managing costs down, without any clear of understanding of ... what we want to achieve as a city" with a "chest full of plans that had been constantly rewritten, relitigated and consulted".
He said the commission's mission had been to help staff "to lift that vision beyond keeping rates low".
He said the community had told him "we're over plans, get out and do something."
He said the plan would mean changes for people "used to driving into the city and getting a park right outside their shop".
Instead, they would drive to a car park and "get out and experience" a "much more uplifting experience" of the city.
"Now the challenge in front of us is to move it beyond a plan."
Commissioner Shadrach Rolleston acknowledged the businesses "that are still here ... that continue to trade, continue to operate, in quite a challenging environment".
He hoped retail would "emerge again, like it used to be" in the city centre.
He said the plan would honour the history of Tauranga being founded as a place of "gathering, connecting, commerce - a place of trade, a place of learning".
He said it would have been good to consider "an opportunity to reduce our carbon footprint" in the plan.
Commissioner Bill Wasley, who had lived in Tauranga since 1985, said he had seen a
"range of plans and strategies that looked all very fine ... then the focus went on something else".
He said the new plan drew on those and had not started from scratch.
He wanted to make sure monitoring, reporting and implementation arrangements were in place to ensure the council got the outcomes it was seeking.
"A plan is well and good, but without that funding and commitment to implementation, it doesn't take us much further."
Tolley questioned the council's urban communities programme director, Carl Lucca, on how progress and outcomes would be measured.
Lucca said staff were working on a monitoring framework, which would come back for discussion.
Tolley said it would also be helpful in future to have an explanation for the plan's emphasis on having people travel "to, from and within" the city centre rather than "through" it.
According to the plan, this meant "providing opportunities for people to drive to the edge of the city centre and park, and providing a high-quality, safe environment for them to walk, cycle, take micro-mobility or public transport to get around once they are there".
Tolley said it was not clear in the plan why that was happening and how it would work for residents.
Darren Davis, practice lead of transport and land use integration from Stantec, the consultants on the plan, replied that "everyone gets access to every area, but it's managed in such a way as to avoid having through traffic sort of going from one side of the city centre to the other".
Christine Jones, council general manager of strategy and growth, said the plan outlined the "principles and concepts" of the project.
Next would come more detailed transport modelling, which may mean some "tweaks" to the plan.
Tolley said the commissioners "might just want to have a briefing to go through because there are quite a number of questions that I think we need to follow up on having adopted it at a high level".
The $1.5 billion in private investment was based off a blueprint of investments released by economic development agency Priority One in May. It included two publicly funded developments - the courthouse and part of the civic precinct project - but was mostly major private developments.
The council said some projects had not been confirmed at that time. The city centre plan recognised "a figure of around $2b more accurately represents private and public future investment for this area".
After the meeting, Priority One chief executive Nigel Tutt said private development investments had grown since then, due to both continued interest and construction cost rises. The blueprint was a "living document".
"All cities need a really good city centre ... this is the right time – it really is a transformational time for the city."
He said the council plan would encourage private investment and ensured the sector was informed about what the council was doing.
"Why would the private sector invest in Tauranga if its own city council doesn't?"
The former dairy farmer turned to art after a rugby accident put him in a wheelchair.