Background
Our growing community needs to be supported by well-functioning commercial, retail and industrial areas. So we need to better manage our business land, to help our city’s businesses provide employment, goods and services in the best locations, and attract investment.
Providing enough business land
There isn’t much vacant industrial land in Tauranga, and the vacant land we do have is filling up fast. We also need to ensure that opportunities for development of retail, offices and community facilities are well-distributed across the city.
So we need to check if the current location of industrial and commercial land is fit for purpose, and if the rules that control those types of land in the city plan are effective in supporting our economy and protecting the environment.
Supporting well-functioning business land
We also need our city plan to better guide which activities can and can’t be developed in our commercial and industrial zones. We need a strategic framework to support the vibrancy of our different types of centres. This includes better enabling, through the city plan, the redevelopment of our city centre into the commercial heart of the city and the sub-region.
Over time, our city plan has allowed a wide range of different activities to establish within zones, which sometimes results in incompatible activities (like factories and homes or marae) right next to each other. In some places, we have learnt that this is impacting the health and wellbeing of our community, and reducing the ability for industrial businesses to operate properly.
A lack of planning controls on how businesses are established in different locations is also impacting on the city’s transport network and the people using it.
We will be reviewing the different uses in industrial zones, commercial zones, and the city centre zone to ensure our community, economy and environment can thrive into the future.
How we’ll go about it
This is a large and complex plan change that will take several years to complete.
We will work with stakeholders and businesses across the city, from small to large, industrial, commercial and retail, to understand their issues with existing planning controls, and their aspirations for their land and business. We will work with them to identify risks and opportunities, and test whatever solutions we propose through the development of this plan change.
We will involve the public in any aspects of broader community interest, and in the formal submission process.
We will work with partners across the western Bay of Plenty and take a sub-regional view on how we provide business land, and we will take our strategic direction from the new SmartGrowth strategy.
Do you want to be involved?
If you own or lease business land in Tauranga and would like to be part of this work, please write to us on city.plan@tauranga.govt.nz
Change will happen over time
Visible change through this plan change would not happen immediately. It would happen over time as landowners decide to develop or lease their business land. Existing use rights will not be removed.
This also means that the plan change won’t be able to fix issues such as congestion and air quality in the short term. It will – alongside other actions from partner organisations – contribute to improvements to these issues overtime, and will help shape our business land for the future.
What do you want the city to look like in 30 years?