Public opinion has ensured the status quo will remain for hotel and bar closing hours in Tauranga and the rest of the Western Bay.
The Bay's councils have backed away from a plan to extend Tauranga downtown's 3am closing to the whole of the Western Bay.
A joint meeting this week of the two councils agreed to stick with 1am closing except the downtown, which stays at 3am. Although police failed in their bid for a 2am closing for the downtown, they did succeed with the introduction of a one-way door policy in the last hour of trading to stop people bar hopping. It was already happening in an informal way.
The 3am closing for bars across the whole of the Western Bay met with strong resistance, including a warning that the city's struggling downtown entertainment area would die. Mount Maunganui residents who lived near the Mount Shopping Centre did not want to put up with the racket of people emptying out of bars at 3am.
The meeting also favoured extending the trading hours for bottle stores to 10pm, instead of the earlier proposal of 9pm. It avoided the situation of supermarkets that closed at 10pm being forced to stop selling beer and wine an hour earlier.