Heart and bones of city’s CBD revival
Ivan Bulling Furniture and Interior Designers owner Grant Bulling said the city needed a heart, and with the museum, and Tay St could be it. ‘‘I think the city needs to be grateful that the Richardsons are investing in the city.
‘‘The city may have lacked a plan and some direction. I am hoping that the museum is a catalyst for change, and that it will motivate other businesses to invest in the city.’’
The furniture store had operated from Tay St for 40 years, and the third generation of the family was showing an interest, Bulling said.
What SoRDS has to say on the inner-city
Invercargill City Council initiatives like the Blumsky, Kobus Mentz and Pockock reports between 2010 and 2015 generated oratorical huffing and puffing that neither blew down the deteriorated buildings nor provided many breaths of fresh air for the downtown shopping experience.
None of them drew the public support needed to realise them.
A tentative start to the Pocock recommendations has taken place in Esk St, but things are once again on hold.
Because all eyes have turned to the Southland Regional Development Strategy which has a real shot at bringing together the four disparate components for progress; the public, the private sector, city council and community funders.
The catchcry of the strategy’s focus on Invercargill is ‘‘to skip a generation and create a contemporary regional city’’.
You don’t have to look sideways at that phrase for too long to see, if not reproach, then at least acknowledgment that the city has a generation of insufficient achievement to catch up on.
‘‘The only way we can make this work is to get everyone working together,’’ says Joc O’Donnell.
She heads the SoRDS vibrant urban centres team. Her Richardson family credentials for the role are pretty stellar, given the celebrated status of the Bill Richardson Transport World and the upcoming Classic Motorcycle Mecca.
The message keeps coming through to the group that the city has no heart.
And that’s not a problem retailers alone can solve, she says, because the face of retail’s changed so much.
Group member Jason Smith from H & J Smith readily agrees.
‘‘None of us can do this by ourselves,’’ he says.
For the private sector to achieve anything by itself would be ‘‘challenging’’.
Community funders by themselves? ‘‘Very challenging.’’
Councillors? ‘‘Extremely challenging’’. And the public? Here’s where O’Donnell’s team is especially careful. They are acutely aware that getting business, the council and community funders on board means nothing much without meaningful public consultation.
Smith: ‘‘When you take on such a delicate matter as this, you’ve got to be very conscious of how you are going to consult and how you’re going to be developing the vision.’’
The group has brought together the reports done to date, determined neither to discard what was useful about them, or adopt any of it uncritically.
And to add new ideas, where appropriate. The Pocock report didn’t proffer a steer on what should happen to the Southland Museum and Art Gallery.
‘‘One of the things our team all feels quite strongly about,’’ says O’Donnell, ‘‘is the arts need to be brought into the CBD.’’
She’s not alone in that. The city council has approved funding for a feasibility study on establishing an inner-city art gallery.
Which invites consideration into the possibility of tuatarium/kakaporium nature exhibitions, perhaps with a ‘‘science alive’’ experience at the existing SMAG site.
But O’Donnell is quick to add: ‘‘These aren’t our decisions to make.’’
Smith puts it this way: the heart of the city needs to have the right bones around it. That’s the strategy’s role. The assembly of the skeleton.
‘‘If the CBD has the right structure, which we keep talking about, then the pieces that fill it in – the colour that goes around that – will be rolled in as a part of that and add to it.’’
So it’s not a matter of the strategy saying this is going to be here and that is going to be there and that’s just the way it has to be?
‘‘That’s not what we’re trying to do,’’ he says. ‘‘We’re trying very hard to create a structure that can evolve and develop for the community’’
But doesn’t the inner city have too many bad bones with those old buildings?
O’Donnell: There needs to be a prioritisation. Which buildings are the ones the city really, really wants saved and which ones it’s not viable to keep standing.’’
All the SoRDS teams are due to report next month on a handful of specific initiatives.
That won’t mean public consultation is sacrificed by deadline imperatives. The thinking must be long-term, O’Donnell says.
But getting the framework decisions accepted will in turn allow for specific projects to follow. And, with an eye to the arts, O’Donnell adds: ‘If we can get one thing over the line, we’ll get the flow-on effect.’’