Haere Rā

If you look up a simple recipe for the breakdown in the vitality of a city centre, you’ll find there’s
a few key components.

Start with a big bowl of urban sprawl and growing satellite towns, mix in some underperforming public transport systems, add a splash of small-scale permanent residences, a pinch of under investment, and a sprinkle of waning vibrancy in shops and eateries, and you you’ve baked yourself
a big loaf of community discontent that tastes a lot like lifelessness.

Did I mention the car parking? Nevermind.

The Beginning

In early 2017, my wife Rachelle and I were shoulder tapped to put our names to a new recipe,
one that would still have most of the same ingredients, but give us opportunity to tweak it.

The council administration building on 91 Willow St was to be demolished, and the vacant space
to be used for a community-orientated project, while decisions were made on the site’s future.

The activation was to be one of the jewels in the crown of the Heart of the City Programme, which was developed as part of the council’s City Centre Strategy for the CBD. We saw the project as
a lens to visualise opportunities for change and provide a positive way forward. A change in culture that could invoke stewardship and help shift perspectives from why things weren’t working in the
city right now, to how they might work better tomorrow.

The shelf life of the project was initially only 12 months, so after evaluating all the risks known to
us at that time, we focused on developing a meaningful project for the community. It seemed inconsequential that our business and self respect could be put in jeopardy, irrespective of having enough spreadsheets and Venn diagrams to sink a ship… full of containers.

Nonetheless, we chose a 1250m2 Trojan horse as our vehicle for change — we decided Our Place Tauranga was to be mostly made from shipping containers. It seemed the most practical option: robust — it could withstand the elements, relatively easy to install, able to be relocated,
and economical.

One of the first points on our ‘things we wished we’d known’ list is how an innovative project of
this scale would require us to fight our way through the battlefield that is the New Zealand building code, which didn’t seem to acknowledge the requirements for a short-term, temporary project of
this kind. This is worth knowing at the start of course, because once you’re already knee-deep in
the project, it might just cost your life savings to work your way back out.

If you’re thinking that as a consequence of this project that we’re bruised fruit, then you’d be almost right. However, fortuitously, we’ve both learned to value and foster our resilience. I repeated to myself, ‘be resilient’ when we had rent-owing tenants disappear into the night. I repeated it on the hour when we had to fundraise to continue operations and local media splashed our faces on the front page and baited its online following for a pile-on. I even murmured it under my breath when the toilets got blocked or the gardens didn’t get watered.

We also know that Our Place Tauranga manifested itself as a legitimate alternative to the status quo. It made space in the CBD for fledgling artists, designers, creators and makers from vastly different backgrounds to perform, run workshops, sell products, promote wellbeing and generally engage with the people who showed up to support them.

An attractive, healthy space, plenty of social activities to bring people together, a place for cultural exchanges, a place for fun... These are all key ingredients in that recipe for CBD vitality and I can see that’s what we’ve added to the mix. We’ve hosted charities, big gigs and small craft sessions, and pretty much everything in between — the social value of Our Place Tauranga was significant.

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The Dip

In early 2020, my quiet ‘be resilient’ self-affirmation had dramatically increased to an almost
three-figure decibel reading. Our occupancy rate for retail spaces had deteriorated and, while
there were various reasons why, I sincerely felt that I should have paid more attention to all those spreadsheets and diagrams.

One night after an annual dinner for the homeless at Our Place Tauranga, we were approached
by friends Jackie and John Paine, who co-created Good Neighbours. They probably didn’t need to refer to any of my schematics to know that we were in a whole world of hurt and invited us to discuss a project for Our Place Tauranga, called ReMaker. It was all about finding sustainable solutions for
all kinds of waste. They proposed a creative, innovative and inspirational hub within Our Place Tauranga that encouraged practical repurposing and upcycling through workshops and workspaces.

We shared their vision, laid it on the table for the council to determine our fate and Remaker was
to be the petrol station that miraculously appears over the hill, just when the fuel gauge is deep
in the red.

Together with the Our Place collective, friends who have helped guide us through the project over
the past four years, and of course the community who have supported it, we managed to stick
a pin bang in the middle of the Venn diagram that was scribbled down during development.
It’s three overlapping circles: desirability, viability and feasibility.

At the time of launch I remember Rachelle saying, “We want to look back and say we carved a path of change for our city.” I think we can reflect on that now with an air of achievement.

The End?

Sadly, the red light setting has halted any plans for an official closing party, but there’s every chance you might get an opportunity to say hello again to your old friend, maybe in another city. We’ll see...

In the meantime, we want to thank the following organisations (especially some people within them that were key to our success) for supporting Our Place Tauranga and helping turn a space into a great community place.

A Big Thank You

Bayleys
BECA
Boffa Miskell
Community Projects Charitable Trust
Creative Tauranga
Downtown Tauranga
Element IMF
Financial Independance Ltd
Good Neighbour
Holland Beckett Law
Kai Aroha
KPMG
Lellman Wearne
OPUS International
Pacific Toyota
Priority One
Remaker
Royal Wolf
Sharp Tudhope
Tauranga City Council
TECT
Te Tuhi Mareikura Trust
The Strand Commercial Properties
Toi-Ohomai
Trustpower
University of Waikato
Veros

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