Our Place to stay until 2020

Our Place back in August at the official opening. Image Nikki South.

The Tauranga City Council has agreed to continue to support the city centre activation ‘Our Place'.

The support will allow Our Place to stay at 91 Willow Street through until June 2020, with council providing a grant of $60,000.

Our Place is a public space in the city centre established this year to inject more life into the city centre and create a vibrant, safe and successful drawcard to the city.

City Transformation Chair, Cr Larry Baldock says he is pleased that council was able to find a way to support Our Place to continue.

'It is clearly a much loved place and in just four months, it has proven very popular. Our Place has made a clear social impact in our city centre – just what we asked for and what the city needs,” he says.

Our Place was established by Little Big Event owners, following council's request for proposal process. The arrangement was for a peppercorn lease of the 91 Willow Street site in return for the delivery of a place-making activation to bring more vibrancy and community connection to the city centre.

Last month the owners and operators of Our Place approached the council for support.

'As a pathfinding project, there were certainly some risks involved to try something new and innovative for our city centre,” says Larry.

'While the project has been a huge success in achieving council objectives, it is clear the cost incurred to establish the site and make it a safe and accessible space has caused some financial challenges.”

In the Long term plan 2015-20, $526,000 was budgeted towards 91 Willow Street to activate the site and build vibrancy in the city centre.

Following the demolition of the old administration building in 2017, the site required utility upgrades including concreate resurfacing, power and water supply works. The $340,000 site preparation costs were part of the Long Term Plan budget.

'Through our Long Term Plan consultation it was clear that people want to see a change for our city centre and an opportunity for more social spaces and community initiatives,” says Larry.

Our Place LTD was set up by Little Big Events as a social enterprise, supporting local organisations, events and activities. A number of local businesses have come on board to help support this initiative get off the ground.

'It is great to see local businesses supporting Our Place, showing a real social conscience and getting on board with this venture. Their additional contributions have been a strong signal to us at council to give this support,” says Larry.

'It is critical that we keep rate payer spend to a minimum, since news that Our Place was in need of help, Holland Beckett Law, Beca and TECT have come forward to join the Our Place family of sponsors.

Environments at Beca general manager, John Duffy says they are proud to support Our Place.

'The street activation has really brought a whole new energy to our city centre. To us, supporting Our Place aligns with our group's purpose to ‘make every day better' and provides us with an opportunity to demonstrate our teams' connection to the city, helping to retain the vibrancy of these activities in the CBD for our community”

Bill Holland from Holland Beckett Law is also proud of what Our Place brings to Tauranga.

'We are happy to get behind and support Our Place. It is such a great social space for the CBD. This sort of engagement fits in really well with our focus on community, as one of the three pillars of our firm's vision,” says Bill.

Our Place will be looking for further sponsorship to continue the momentum to make a lasting impact in Tauranga city centre.

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4 comments

Waste of taxpayer money

Posted on 19-12-2018 11:21 | By Angels

This is stupid. Why are we the tax payer paying for private businesses to make extra money. This is a waste of tax/ ratepayer money. This council are totally out of touch. Private business is just that, not ratepayer/tax payer funded. Maybe every new business coming to town should get free money// not. Hopefully no councillors are invested with any of these operations,


Really?

Posted on 19-12-2018 12:52 | By overit

Haven't been there myself. Why am I funding this??


Why not rename it?

Posted on 19-12-2018 14:29 | By nerak

And spend even more of our shallowing pockets.


All their Xmas's came at once...

Posted on 19-12-2018 15:11 | By If only

Aren't our councillors having a wonderful splurge this Xmas ! What with signing of on that hideously long new name for the concrete jungle at the Mount and now a bunch of money for private enterprise. Having been to 'Our Place' many times now (really enjoyed it too), I cant help but think the eateries & retailers will be doing ok, so maybe they should be paying a bit more to contribute rather than us long suffering rate payers !


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