Otara to revive tourism initiative

Otara leaders are reviving a plan to turn the troubled suburb into a tourist attraction.

A new Otara Economic Development Trust wants to capitalise on the popular Saturday market to make the area "the cultural hub of Southern Polynesia".

The trust, chaired by former Manukau mayoral candidate Len Brown, also aims to link Otara's unemployed youngsters into the fast-growing industrial area of neighbouring East Tamaki, where employers are crying out for skilled workers.

The number of people drawing unemployment benefits through the Otara Work and Income office dropped from 1152 to 439 in the five years to September, but Mr Brown says too many young people are still coming out of school without the skills they need to take up the jobs being offered.

"The real challenge is education. It's getting them off to tech or to university and getting them to stay at school longer so that by the time they hit these jobs they have some of the skills," he said.

He and the trust's new chief executive, Josephine Baker, spoke about their goals yesterday in the wake of escalating violence between youth gangs which left one man dead at Labour weekend. A "peace conference" for young people is being held in the nearby suburb of Mangere tomorrow.

The Otara market was listed as one of the nine "key sights" to see in Auckland in last year's Rough Guide to New Zealand.

A precursor of the new trust, Enterprise Otara, initially proposed leveraging off the market to make Otara a tourist mecca in 1999. A local marae was lined up to host cultural performances, but the idea foundered when performances had to be cancelled to make way for tangi.

Mr Brown, an Otara lawyer, said he hoped the trust would find a new venue.

"My personal belief is that now is the time. We have the personnel. We have the appropriate decision-makers. Our community is ready for it," he said.

"We now have the leaders in their 20s and 30s who are capable of delivering on a vision. This will position Otara as the cultural hub of Southern Polynesia."

Another Manukau group, Soifua, is promoting a plan for a $5 million Polynesian village alongside the new Pacific Events Centre at the Manukau City centre. But Mr Brown said there was room for attractions at Otara too.

"If you look at Rotorua, they have a multitude of cultural experiences at different hotels, different villages, out to Taupo and so on, and I could see this happening in two or three parts of Manukau," he said.

The new trust has also been involved in discussion about a controversial "Cyber Communities" programme set up as part of the Government's "Jobs Jolt" package last year to help unemployed people into jobs in information technology in three pilot areas - Otara, Tokoroa and Southland.

An official evaluation published in February found that the scheme had cost $445,000 but got only four beneficiaries into work in its first few months.

A later evaluation found that by March this year the scheme had cost $2.3 million and placed 23 people into work. Another seven had gone on to voluntary work, five had gone on to further study, 31 had left the scheme without any information on where they had gone, and 111 were still in the scheme across the three pilot areas.

Otara's scheme was run initially by a Pacific arts trust called Wahine Malosi, which also opened an art gallery, Artnet, as an outlet for local artists in the Otara town centre.

The Government cancelled its contract with Wahine Malosi in March and that trust has now closed. Artnet has transferred to the new Economic Development Trust, and Cyber Communities to Pacific Rim Consultants in East Tamaki.