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I’ve spent the week in Tauranga at the National Under-15 rugby tournament, and it’s been an eye-opener.
A couple of weeks back, I wrote how Wellington, our capital city, appears to be in a state of rapid demise and general malaise. Now, I’m wondering if the same thing isn’t true about Tauranga, Aotearoa New Zealand’s fifth largest city.
Its CBD is dead. Not dying. I’ve been there. It’s dead. Dozens of shops are empty, their doorways now occupied by homeless people who have moved into the city centre to take advantage of the wide entrances to shops that don’t look like they’ll re-open anytime soon. I counted seven homeless people in these entrance ways on Tuesday night.
One dude woke up and spoke to me for a while. He had a few things go against him - starting with a marriage split – and now lives down the road from the two pokie bars that have opened on the main street. There were signs on their doors making it clear no gang patches are allowed -- or else! Or else what, I thought. No entry? It’s not as if there was anyone in these bars to be bothered or intimidated by someone wearing a patch.
Then I walked past what was once the main bank in town, the cornerstone ANZ whose sign read CLOSED. Not for the night, but until further notice. There did seem to be a fair few vape stores. It seems you can bank on them being around, which isn’t surprising given how rapidly the number of specialist vape stores has risen -- from just 130 registered in September 2021 to 1280 by March 2024, according to the Ministry of Health.
The Tauranga City Council promises that a major building and redevelopment programme is underway, and these “exciting projects” will transform the CBD into a place “we can all be proud of”.
But after Covid, changing shopping habits, parking fees (policed by parking wardens), and the contribution of the cost-of-living crisis to the retail downturn, will this be enough to reverse the empty shops and rise in homeless people in the central city? Let’s also factor in neighbouring areas like Mount Maunganui and Papamoa (growing exponentially), which have their own shopping precincts, and the rise and rise of the shopping mall. Why wouldn’t you go to, say, Bayfair or Tauranga Crossing, where there are hundreds of shops, cinemas, free parking and security?
Personally, I am not a fan of the cookie-cutter approach taken by shopping malls, but I see the attraction of free parking and a compact collection of shops within a relatively short walk.
That malls have killed main streets is nothing new, but I come back to the fact that Tauranga is our fastest growing regional centre and our fifth largest city. Surely its central business district shouldn’t be so, well, depressed?
After being run by a four-person commission, led by former National MP Anne Tolley, since 2021, Tauranga has a new council led by new mayor Mahé Drysdale. I sincerely wish them all the best in being able to progress plans for the CBD and turn things around.
Tauranga has one of the most beautiful, warmest coastlines in New Zealand, it’s got a great climate and, yes, potential. Its CBD is on prime land in an amazing location but as I stood in a bar on that waterfront on Tuesday night, it was just me and two local bartenders.
A huge bar, music pumping to no one, two bartenders and one paying customer - me - and I was on lemon, lime and bitters.
