The Project Auckland series looks at the challenges facing Auckland as it seeks to become a world-class city.
Bob Harvey says he found a city in economic ruin when he was elected as Waitakere's mayor in 1992.
Disputes between the mayors of the various borough councils that existed prior to the establishment of Waitakere City Council - which Harvey calls "fiefdoms" - had caused the city to lose out.
"Banks and lending institutions would not deal with the west," he says. "[Its] credit rating was zero."
But since the early 1990s the city has seen an economic rejuvenation of sorts.
Harvey says Waitakere's first business awards ceremony, in 1994, was attended by just 15 guests.
When the event is held for the last time later this year - in October, just before the city is swallowed up by the new Auckland Council - the Waitakere Trust Stadium will be filled to capacity.
"Table after table will be celebrating the financial success of the west," says Harvey.
He says that after being elected in 1992 he found many of the shops along Lincoln Rd had been closed by order of the council headed by his predecessor - Waitakere's first mayor, Assid Corban.
Jealousy was the motivation behind the closure of the stores, he says, the same kind of petty disputes that occurred when the borough councils were still in existence.
"It took me three years to get [the] locks off those doors."
Harvey says large retailers wanting to open on Lincoln Rd had failed to get permission from the previous, Corban-led council.
Today, the proliferation of large-scale retailers along the commercial strip of Lincoln Rd is testament to his success in getting the anti-business ideology that formerly existed in the council turned around.
Waitakere, which likes to think of itself as the "Hollywood of the Pacific", now has a burgeoning film industry.
Numerous large-scale, US productions have taken place in the film studios at the back of Henderson.
The studios were built by the council on a site formerly occupied by the Apple and Pear Marketing Board.
Harvey says 1500 to 2000 people are employed on each production.
Nearby, off Lincoln Rd, productions also take place at South Pacific Pictures' (SPP) film facilities.
Managing director John Barnett says Waitakere's birth as a film destination began with the Hercules and Xena productions in the 1990s.
Harvey says he talked Barnett into moving out of the facilities SPP formerly occupied on the North Shore.
"[South Pacific] just jumped ship but we put out the welcome mat," Harvey says.
Barnett says Waitakere has proved to be a particularly film-friendly council.
"Having a friendly council is useful because you can shoot on the streets but also [in Waitakere] you're in close proximity to pretty much any location you want to shoot at, whether it's the beach, or the bush, or urban and residential. "We're a significant employer here and so the council looks after its key businesses."
Barnett says film facilities have also attracted new residents into Waitakere who may not have considered living there city 10 years ago.
The formation of the new Auckland Council later this year is unlikely to bring any large-scale changes to Waitakere's film industry, he adds.
"If anything, what's been going on here [Waitakere] might be applied across the whole region."
As well as his council's courting of the film industry, Harvey also lists the redevelopment of the Henderson and New Lynn town centres as some of his greatest achievements.
In the early 1990s he approached Australian mall operator Westfield with the proposal of it developing the former Henderson Square mall into the modern shopping complex it is today.
He remembers Henderson Square as an awful place, where degenerates "spat on some people for a joke".
Another step in the development of the town centre came when the council buildings were moved from their previous site in Lincoln Rd to central Henderson.
The council's move resulted in an extra 800 people working in Henderson - a boon for the town centre's retailers.
A few kilometres up Great North Rd, another project is underway to regenerate one of Waitakere's other important town centres.
The redevelopment of New Lynn, a public/private sector partnership centred around a major transport interchange, is projected to maintain a population of 20,000 residents and 14,000 workers by 2030.
More than $300 million has already been invested in the transport hub.
New business and residential areas are part of the development.
Waitakere City Council chief executive Vijaya Vaidyanath says new jobs created by the development will mainly be in the retail, service and light industrial sectors.
She says around 46 per cent of Waitakere's residents currently travel out of the city to work in other regions of Auckland.
"We want people to live [New Lynn] and work there so we can avoid this transiting to the city."
In the future she would like to see at least 70 per cent of region's residents living and working in the west.
Jaine Lovell-Gadd, director of corporate and business services for the council, says New Lynn's recently opened Kohu Road Icecream Company is an example of the kind of innovative manufacturing that could take place in the area.
Company founder Greg Hall says setting up the factory in New Lynn made sense because of its location close to important roading links.
The company currently employs 12 staff.
"[The council] have been really encouraging," he says.
"They're interested, whereas a lot of other [councils] in other parts of the city are a little less interested.
"The council is putting a lot of money and thought into improving this part of Auckland."
Waitakere City Council also believes boat building - particularly of superyachts - has the potential to become one of the region's most promising industries.
Waitakere Properties, a wholly owned subsidiary of Waitakere City Council, has purchased 20ha of waterfront land, formerly occupied by the Hobsonville airforce base, for development as a superyacht facility.
The development, when completed, will see 84,000sq m of marine sheds constructed, with facilities capable of housing superyachts up to 90m in length.
But freehold titles for the land on which the shed will be built need to be sold before the development can begin.
Greg Parker, chief executive of Waitakere Properties, recently travelled to the Abu Dhabi Yacht Show to promote the development.
He recently said much interest had been shown in the project and work was set to begin within the next 13 months.
Plans are underway for a 3000-home housing development next door to the superyacht facility, while in nearby Westgate major redevelopment of land for business and residential purposes is already underway.
But while Harvey claims many successes in changing Waitakere's business landscape during his mayoral reign, he is also willing to admit his defeats.
"Tourism, I have to say, is my failure," he says.
Harvey's original plan for the Hillary Trail - a 70km walk through the Waitakere Ranges and along the West Coast - was to have it function as a fully guided operation, like the South Island's Milford and Routeburn Tracks. Getting permission to make his plan a reality was thwarted at every turn by the Auckland Regional Council, he says.
"The ARC - all mayors will agree - has been the absolute enemy of economic development.
"You might say I'm not wildly enthusiastic about the ARC when it comes to business."
Harvey says that if the Hillary Trail been allowed to function as a fully guided walk, it could have helped Waitakere become an "international tourist base".
It could have also created vital jobs for a city with a 7 per cent, and rising, unemployment rate.
"The ARC, in their draconian way, decided the trail would be for day trippers carrying the kitchen sink on their back."
Another disappointment for Harvey is his failure to get the Whenuapai airforce base converted into a mixed use, commercial and military airport.
"I could not convince the Labour Government that sharing the airport was viable," he says.
Harvey says he is happy with Prime Minister John Key's decision to keep the airforce base at Whenuapai functional, which means the "door is still open" for future commercialisation of the airbase.
When he finally hangs up his mayoral chain later this year, Harvey jokes that as well as becoming chairman of the Waterfront Development Committee he will also "moonlight" as a guide on the Hillary Trail.
"Just to piss them [the ARC] off," he says.
