• Home
• Executive Summary
• Introduction
• The Journey
• The Vision
  • Vision Statement & Area Defined
  • Values and Themes
  • Draft Concept Plan
  • Visuals
  • Draft Aerial Oblique View
  • General Commercial Influence on the Town Centre
  • Relation to other Council Work & Key Questions
• Implementation
• Governance

Executive Summary

With its location between the Whakatane River and the escarpment, the
commercial centre of Whakatane is uniquely defined as an attractive and
vibrant setting to do business and for residents and visitors to enjoy. There is a mix of retail, residential, civic and tourism related uses in the town centre.

It includes a scale and form of development that is changing but that
respects the strong historic and cultural setting of the town centre.
The promotion of a Town Centre Vision provides a framework by which
the Council, developers and the wider community can collectively protect
those special features that maintain the character of the town centre, while enabling an appropriate scale of development that is economically viable. It will also provide an opportunity to enhance and celebrate other attributes which have been lost or hidden.

The Vision is consistent with our community outcomes that seek:
• A clean protected environment;
• Environmentally responsible development;
• A prosperous economy;
• Strong, transparent and open leadership; and
• A diverse, creative and active community.

The Town Vision identifies key themes and principles to guide decisions
about how the town centre should develop in the future. It describes how this could happen with concept plans and ideas about the mechanisms that could be used.

The Town Vision plan is a concept plan at this stage, the detail of which will be refined as the plan develops and various areas are completed., over the next 10 to 20 Years.