Tauranga city Council's approach to planning its new administration building is going to change from next Tuesday, December 20, when the first decisions are made about the way forward for the new council.

The new City Transformation Committee's chairman Larry Baldock says first up there will be a bit of a rethink and analysis on the state of the other council buildings in the city precinct.

It's accepted the administration building fronting Willow St is to be demolished, but there will be another look at the library and the corner building.

'I think there's a general view among the elected members that we are going to be taking a fresh look at some of it, seeing what becomes what and what is placed where,” says Larry.

'I think issues around the museum are still surfacing. The location of the museum is still far from settled. 'When you look at what they came up with – four buildings, including the museum and the library – that meant you had a pretty crowded square.

'We are going to try and sort that out as early as we can what the locations will be.

'It's crazy to go ahead with feasibility studies when you still have two sites, because then you start duplicating everything. We should get that settled,” says Larry.

The buses are another issue yet to be discussed and decided. The bus tops will have to be moved from Willow St because of the demolition of the administration building. It was suggested in the workshop the bus stops be moved to Durham St, but no-one yet knows where in Durham St that will be, says Larry.

'The decision that the previous council made before was that by December there would be a report from staff that would touch on the issues. To a large extent we're going through that,” says Larry.

The workshop also involved a bit of a debrief from councillors who were part of the process up to the election and from councillors that had observed the process from the outside.

'We discussed what we saw had gone wrong and how we should do it better in future,” says Larry.