City activities aim to attract visitors

Zoe Barnes

The arrival of a wannabe vampire along with "Fairy Rosebud" in the Napier CBD next month will be among the colourful ingredients designed to give the city a mid-winter spark, Napier City Business Inc manager Zoe Barnes said.

"It doesn't matter that it's winter - it's all about having things going on in Napier and getting people here," she said.

As well as preparing shopping and competition promotions, Ms Barnes was putting the final touches to programmes which would attract children and young people into the central city, as the mid-winter period of planned events revolved around the same time as the July school holidays.

Adding to the mix will be the arrival of leading comedian Cori Gonzalez-Macuer who starred in the hit vampire comedy film What We Do In The Shadows.

Ms Barnes said Mr Gonzalez-Macuer would be staging a comedy show in Napier on July 2 - part of a string of mid-winter events planned.

A busking competition would be staged in Market St on Saturday, July 11 along with supervised entertainment for small children in a special area where "Fairy Rosebud" would reign.

She would stage "fairy workshops" and face paintings, while magicians would create some magic.

"The hope here is that parents will drop their kids off for an hour or so and spend time in town," Ms Barnes said.

She said she was in the process of working with local high schools to help create the busking competition.

Napier Inner City Business was also in the process of creating a children's "gig guide" showing all the school holiday programmes taking place in and around the CBD.

"There is a lot on offer."

Ms Barnes said the Toyota Winter Deco Weekend would be under way between July 17 and 19 which would attract people into the city, including visitors from out of town.

"So we intend to build on this."

The full programme of events to get people out of the house and into the city would be released later this month.