Rotorua's City Focus: Should it stay or go?

FILE

Rotorua's City Focus could face the wrecking ball if plans revealed in the council's draft Inner City Revitalisation Strategy go ahead.

In a majority vote, the Rotorua Lakes Council resolved to include the draft strategy in its upcoming Long Term Plan for public consultation, which will be released later this month.

The plan for the City Focus includes changes to the road layout on Tutanekai St to ensure the street is recognised as the city's main thoroughfare.

"In its current physical form City Focus is acting as a deterrent to both foot traffic and vehicles and general patronage within the inner city and ultimately reinvestment.

"The Inner City Steering Group has endorsed the removal of the City Focus building to encourage reinvestment to Hinemoa St, achieving the north-south traffic flow to encourage reinvestment into the blocks either side of Tutanekai St and the removal of the sails and pillars to encourage pedestrian activity," the draft strategy states.

The first draft of the strategy went out for pre-consultation in November last year.

The council's Inner City lead adviser, Portia McKenzie, said more than 130 responses were received with about 65 per cent of respondents saying they supported a review of the City Focus.

An Inner City Steering Group formed to review the feedback has suggested the City Focus could potentially be contributing to a lack of reinvestment in the inner city. The council also engaged independent consultants McDermott Miller Strategies to produce a report on the economic impacts of the City Focus at a cost of $13,800. The report stated "removal of the sails and pillars of City Focus and reconfiguring its traffic flows has potential to make a modest positive contribution to revitalisation of Rotorua's CBD.

"It is important, however, to recognise such impacts are minor compared to the challenges to retail across Rotorua's CBD from continuing loss in real spending power by shoppers and retailers attracted by the Central Mall.

"But no amount of streetscape improvements will achieve revitalisation unless the retail offer on Tutanekai St itself improves."

The report was presented at a meeting of the council's strategy, policy and Finance committee on Wednesday.

Committee chairwoman Merepeka Raukawa-Tait said "after 20-odd years everything should be looked at to see if it is fit for purpose".

However, Councillor Charles Sturt said he was not in favour of removing the City Focus.

He said he remembered $26 million being spent on the last revitalisation project in the early 1990s when the City Focus was built.

"Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater on the back of a report that says removing the Focus may or may not work. There is vibrancy in the CBD, we just need to work on it," he said.

Grahame Hall, who was Rotorua mayor when the City Focus was built, told the Rotorua Daily Post he had not yet seen the strategy, but would like the City Focus to remain.

"Trying to make the city pedestrian and bicycle friendly on one hand and re-introducing cars on the other, just doesn't seem to make sense."

Detailed costs for the revitalisation of the inner city will be included when the strategy is released with the council's Long Term Plan around April 20. Public consultation will run for a month.