Harm Zuidmeer: Yes to green corridor

Rotorua city needs her vibrant heart back.

Over the past few years I have seen the city centre slowly decline and her heart is looking bleak.

The City Focus - where Hinemoa and Tutanekai embrace - has lost its spark. A lot of retailers who have been in the central city for generations have either shut their doors or have moved to the mall at the southern end of Tutanekai St.

How can we breathe life back into our city's heart?

I've done my share of travelling. I've even managed to snare a Bachelor in Spatial Design before the beaches, lakes, and rolling hills of Aotearoa called me back.

Like most people confronted with this question, the answer is people. People make the fabric of a city. Take people away and the whole thing implodes.

Every city has a square and more often than not that square is lined with tables and seats. They're all places that people want to be in. They travel from all corners of their city, and even the world, to sit in those seats at those tables and under those parasols. Why? Each of those city squares has one main role. The role of allowing people to sit and have a good cup of coffee, or whatever takes your fancy, and catch up with friends and colleagues.

Looking to our city centre I was dismayed to see an astonishing amount of parking, relative to meagre retail space.

The Rotorua CBD has become a victim of our modern mobile car-based society. Rotorua CBD has become road kill.

Our current council is working hard to revitalise our prized city by looking at what we can do better and how we can create a vibrant heart where people want to go and spend time.

The main aim for the Green Corridor is to essentially create two Green Corridors directing people to the city heart and revitalising Tutanekai St.

One corridor will come from Lake Rd and head through Kuirau Park and down Haupapa St and one corridor will head to the Government Gardens past the Rotorua Arts Village down Hinemoa St.

Both corridors will flow into Tutanekai St to create a destination for people to spend time. What's interesting about this plan is that both corridors don't meet at one point.

The visitor is encouraged to wander down our main street, which is the whole point of this initiative.

This also allows for future plans to encourage access to the green corridor from other parts of the CBD, such as the mall at the southern end and Eat Streat near the lake.

The Green Corridor project is one element of the larger revitalisation vision. Rotorua needs this vision so that it can move forward and reclaim her city centre - her heart.

People need to be able to use the city centre for its original purposes: a destination, a place to enjoy, and a place to do business.

If we all work together our city centre will reclaim its rightful place as the heart of the premiere tourist destination in New Zealand, and be a fantastic place to live and work.