Imagine this

MARTIN DE RUYTER/The Nelson Mail

IDEAS: The group behind the Heart of Nelson strategy envisage the development of a "pocket park" in this corner of the Montgomery Square carpark.

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A blueprint to guide the development of central Nelson for the next decade and beyond has been completed. Geoff Collett looks at what its architects hope is in store.

A cynical colleague looks faintly appalled at the mention of a "strategy" from Nelson City Council to guide the development of the inner city. He's got a point: words like "council" and "strategy" are hardly the most inspiring companions. "Re-arranging the deckchairs on the Titanic," he sniffs.

He's being unfair, though. For one thing, there's no clear evidence that the city centre has hit an iceberg. On the contrary, "good bones" is the description of the downtown area that's been popularly tossed around since this exercise, dubbed the Heart of Nelson, was started. It's building the flesh and muscle on them that's at stake here.

And the council's own enthusiasm can't be questioned, after it spent more than a year consulting and brainstorming, bringing in businesspeople, community leaders and consultants, crunching numbers, rethinking planning rules, trying to re-imagine the city as it could be.

The result the Heart of Nelson strategy (or "blueprint", if a slightly less tedious piece of jargon works better for you) for the development of inner Nelson over the next decade and more was finally adopted last week as the council's official word on the city's direction.

However, deputy mayor Rachel Reese, who has been a central figure in the exercise, would rather it not be portrayed as a council document, pointing out that a community effort lies behind it.

Some may sense a wishlist; others will judge it on whether the wishes within can come true.

Evidence that the council means business can be found where it matters, in the council's budgets. Most actions requiring money have had it allocated somewhere in the 10-year plan. The strategy has also been built into the performance agreement between the council and chief executive Keith Marshall. Seeing the goals delivered will be one of Mr Marshall's "key performance indicators" for his employer to judge him by.

Some of it is drawing lines in the sand; some of it is hoping to inspire or prod developers to sign up to the vision of a more coherent, connected town centre. Ultimately, Ms Reese says, much of it is about people: "Making this a place where people want to come to".

It might be easy to say but tricky to achieve, as both Ms Reese and David Jackson, the senior council planner who has been at the heart of project, acknowledge.

Mr Jackson talks of the central city as an ecology, to give the sense of an inter-connected environment and to highlight the complexities.

Various reviews of the city centre have occupied the council down the years but this is the most far-reaching in recent memory. Whereas such a review might once have led to some fancy new street paving and furnishings, this project has tried to be more earnest and well-grounded, including looking at the gaps and unrealised opportunities in Nelson's economy.

Similarly, when the strategy group wanted to explore the potential for some of Nelson's inner suburbs to be redeveloped for more intensive housing (to bring more people closer to town and hopefully make it more vibrant), valuers were called in to assess whether the idea made economic sense.

Mr Jackson counts 104 items in the strategy, from the relatively trifling to the far-reaching, and "virtually everything in there is something that wasn't happening", or happening in a disjointed way.

An implementation group has been set up to work across the council's divisions, making sure the strategy is to the forefront in any project involving the inner city.

Mr Jackson and Ms Reese both accept that while elements of the strategy will be put into effect in the next couple of years, much of it will be over to future councils.

But for now, it is today's blueprint for a brighter, more defined, coherent, organised, appealing, walkable, creative, relaxing Nelson. Its lasting power, Mr Jackson says, will lie in the community buy-in that created it, and the logic that underpins it.

- © Fairfax NZ News