Revitalising our shopping areas
The Eastbourne Community Board website urges locals to ?buy local, please!? and reflects the pleas of many local shopping districts? to keep their centres vibrant. Eastbourne Community Board chairperson Ian Young says the area?s shopkeepers association recently met with managers from the Hutt City Council to discuss a renewal process for the suburb. Although the area is not due for council attention until 2012, Mr Young says getting the ball rolling sooner will help the area retain its character and prevent shop closures. ?What we want to do in the meantime is open up Rona Street to connect with the wharf better. ?We want to see how to open it up and make it more inviting,? he says. Mr Young says some shops need to stay in the area, like the 4Square, the butcher, green grocer, and the coffee bars among others. He says closure issues lie mainly with ?speciality shops? such as Rona Gallery, which depend on outside visitors to keep them afloat. Basic shops are ?maintained by the locals? and Mr Young has been talking ?unsuccessfully? with the Council about lowering rates for retail shops, which are affected by high house prices in the area. ?The council should give a rebate to help established places. ?We are currently identifying what we want to do locally,? he says. Moera pharmacist Mark Trevean says the Council tends to show a ?vague interest? in satellite shopping areas like Moera. In the past the Council has helped in terms of fixing up the road, footpaths and lighting, which has been appreciated, says Mr Trevean. Four shops have recently closed in the Moera shopping strip and one new coffee shop has opened. He says along with the council?s responsibility to the area, the shopping strip?s main landowner also has an important role to play in revitalising the place. Moera has a ?strong sense of community? but a ?lack of interest? means keeping the area fresh is a challenge. The Wellington City Council?s Suburban Centres Plan is not due to reach Tawa for a while yet. ?Based on the priorities laid down we are about six years away, but we can do things in Tawa to move us forward,? says Tawa Community Board Chairman Robert Tredger. He says in the next few months Wellington will see the changes from Auckland?s reshuffle of local government, and that could affect local decision making in Tawa. ?It?s about where we fit into the changing process of creating larger cities. ?This is the government?s line of thinking,? he says. A suburban plan is part of what the community board is talking about with the Council but it will be ?a few years before we get in the loop,? says Mr Tredger.
