Tauranga City Council Commission chair Anne Tolley is outlining the rationale for the City Centre Action and Investment Plan.

The estimated two-billion dollar plan, signed off in August, aims to transform the central city into a busy, vibrant hub where people want to live, work, shop and play.

Speaking to RNZ's Nine To Noon, Tolley says the Tauranga CBD has faced 'years of neglect” prior to the commissioners being appointed in 2021, and has labelled the plan as "absolutely critical" for the health of the city centre.

'We've seen big malls in the new subdivisions, and the mount shopping centre is really vibrant, but the community told us very clearly they wanted us to develop a vibrant city centre,” says Tolley.

'So that's what we've been working on along with the private sector. A lot of what is planned for the CBD relies on the private sector, who was really wanting a bit of certainty from the council.”

Tolley says the first decision the commissioners made was deciding where to place the council administration office, which she says was after a long period of 'indecision” by the council prior to the commissioners stepping in.

An artists impression of the Tauranga waterfront transformation. Photo: Supplied/Tauranga City Council.

'We made a decision to put the building in the middle of Devonport Road. It's a green six star building, so we're showing a bit of leadership from a carbon emissions point of view. It also is putting 700 people on a daily basis in the middle of the city.

'We then turned our attention to the civic centre. We had to rebuild the library and community centre. We went out and consulted with the community on a big civic centre plan.”

Tolley adds the civic centre plan will cost about $303 million, and will include a library, community centre, a museum, an exhibition centre, a connection to the waterfront and a civic whare which she describes as a 'modern day town hall”.

'We are also turning some land on top of that into a hotel, conference centre and performing arts centre.”

According to Tolley, the council has consulted with ratepayers to ensure they will 'only pay for half” of the plan.

'We will look to raise the rest of the fund from a variety of outside places.”

On the concerns on the remaining half of the funding for the civic centre plan, Tolley says the council will not 'go ahead” unless it has a business case and the funding is confirmed.

She adds the variety of funding the council is yet to seek from other sources such as community trusts, lotteries and the Government means they 'cannot show' where the remaining $150 million is coming from as of yet.

'Then, we have worked with the private sector who have confirmed about $1.2 billion worth of private investment into the city.

'We've identified it is not just about the centre of the CBD, we are working with the University of Waikato on a knowledge precinct, there's a historic precinct. So we are working quite widely. It's not just the commission making these decisions, we're working with different sections of the community and different interests.”

When asked about the rates trajectory to fund the infrastructure projects, Tolley says the council has 'certainly increased the rates substantially”.

'I think it was a 22 per cent rate increase the first year, and the next year was 13.7 per cent.”

Tolley says despite the substantial rates increase, the council has been reshaping 'who pays for what” to ease the burden on residents.

'What we've found is the residents were actually bearing a huge share of the burden. Even though the rates hadn't gone up to keep pace to manage the growth, the residents were being really hard hit. So we've been reshaping the load of the rates load.

'We've got a huge job ahead of us, because this city has not really managed growth and the current residents have suffered and we have had a huge deficit of community infrastructure.”

- Additional reporting by Nine To Noon/RNZ.