Editorial: Feet on street positive for city

New life is being breathed into the Rotorua CBD.

Given this is time of year we're most likely to read about tragedy in the form of road accidents and drownings, it's nice to be able to turn the focus to news that's positive for our city.

Yesterday we reported on signs the revitalisation of Rotorua's city centre is working, with an increase in foot traffic recorded.

It's early days but more feet on the street, combined with a big increase in foot traffic at the Central Mall and positive feedback from businesses and shoppers is plenty of reason for cautious optimism at least.

To get to this point has been a real team effort - particularly the sustained focus from the Inner City Focus Group, local businesses and the Rotorua Lakes Council - and again, even though it's early days a pat on the collective back is warranted.

As we've reported recently, there's a lot yet to come in the central city, including the proposed Green Corridor shared cycleway and the relocation of the main bus stop and bus routes among other initiatives.

Meanwhile, local shoppers, and jobseekers, can also look forward to major developments outside the central city.
Three weeks ago we reported on plans for a new entertainment and retail centre on Te Ngae Rd, while today we reveal plans for a new Countdown supermarket on Fairy Springs Rd.

It seems a long time now Rotorua has had four supermarkets. When I was a youngster there were smaller supermarkets at Edmund Rd, Owhata and the sites where Novotel and Spotlight now sit.

Given the concentration of three of our current supermarkets in one area, you can imagine residents of our eastern and western suburbs will welcome these new options.

- Along with the revitalisation of the CBD there has been over the past year a campaign to highlight and encourage great service in our city.
We've played a part with our weekly That's Great Service column in 48 Hours. One of the names local shoppers have consistently pointed out as providing great service is The Warehouse checkout operator Tumai Nooroa. So we did a story about him. And you loved it. I'm happy to report it was one of our most-read stories online this week (see page A2) and was shared and liked on Facebook more than 1000 times. Great stuff.