Well, moving on from the Waterfront commercialisation debacle, let's look at the Tauranga Council City Plan on which Council has only endorsed carparking requirements inter alia for high-rise development in Tauranga CBD within the past 12 months.
It has been in place and it seemed to work, developers either needed to provide the parking or meet the impact fees. Suddenly out of the woodwork up pops Tauranga City Plan Variation 6 (Rule 4), which was recently dealt with at an RMA Commissioner's hearing and seeks to remove the existing on-site car parking minimum for all sites zoned City Centre. The plan is that landowners and developers will in future be at liberty to decide on the number of carpark spaces needed.
This has turned the existing accepted practise on its head, again driven by Priority One and Chamber of Commerce and all the usual suspects. Getting rid of City Centre Parking requirements and permitting developers to fix their own on-site parking numbers is akin to letting mice into the cheese factory stuff!
This all tied up with the ongoing Waterfront saga and the drive for commercialisation in this area! What an ill-thought, ill-focused, ill-planned mess this is going to be! Apparently Tauranga CBD buildings needed adequate onsite parking before, now after lobbying by special interests we don't need even minimum parking requirements and take it from me, it will do nothing for the CBD's future wellbeing.

R Paterson, Matapihi.