A short history on the giant Santa...

Lets face it, a Christmas in Auckland CBD, wouldn't be a Christmas without the giant Santa! Since 1960, Santa has been bringing joy to Aucklanders with his jolly face and round belly.  

Thousands watch the 1983 Farmers Santa Parade

By the early 2000's Santa had earned a rather unappealing nickname - 'Creepy Santa'

But by the early 2000's, after nearly 40 years, Santa's face was looking anything but jolly and had earned a rather unappealing nickname - 'Creepy Santa'. So in late 2008, when the future of Santa was in jeopardy, we ran a poll asking Aucklander's whether Santa, should stay or go. The over-whelming response was that as an Auckland icon Santa should stay. So in early 2009, we started the arduous task of giving Santa a much needed makeover. 

Santa in 2010, accompanied by giant reindeer

Compare and contrast. Old Santa Vs New Santa

After almost a year 'under the knife', Santa's new look was unveiled in time for Christmas 2009 and this time he wasn't alone. 2 giant reindeer accompanied Santa.

So to celebrate the giant Santa going up for 2011, we have put together some interesting facts you may have previously not known about the big red jolly guy. 

• Santa is 51 years old
• He weighs approximately two tonnes & stands 68 ft tall (or 2072.64cm)
• He was constructed in time for Christmas 1960
• Santa started blinking and moving each morning at 7am and was turned off, 16 hours later at 11pm. During this time his finger beckoned people to Farmers 27 times a minute, or 25,920 times a day. His eye blinked seven times a minute; 6720 times every day. He was originally perched outside of the Farmers building on Hobson Street (now the Heritage Hotel) until 1990. 
• In the mid-90's Santa moved to his current home, onto of the Whitcoulls Building (Cnr Queen & Victoria Streets)
• In 2007, Heart of the City purchased Santa from Whitcoulls for $1
• In 2009, Santa received a makeover and received 2 new 'mates' 2 giant reindeer

Installing Santa and the reindeer on Whitcoulls Corner is only one of the many Christmas decorations we install around the CBD. To find out what we have planned for Christmas 2011 click here...

The results are in...

...from the We Only Get One Chance poll we ran. These results make up part of our submission on the Auckland Plans. You can view a snapshot of the results below or download the complete submission.   

Of those who answered, 88% do not want public spaces at Wynyard Quarter to be covered with offices, shops and apartments. This result, and many of the comments made, show strong public support for more open space ahead of offices, shops and apartments. 

Of those who answered, 85% do not support the Port’s reclamation plans or an increase to four times the number of containers handled now. 

While comments indicated an appreciation of the importance of New Zealand’s trade, there was a general view that the Bledisloe reclamation plan was just too big. We have suggested looking at alternatives, as indicated elsewhere in this submission. 

We note that POAL have attacked this question. For the record, the proposed reclamation of Bledisloe is massive - it is a broad reclamation that will stretch another 250 metres into the Waitemata, covering an additional area greater than 15 rugby fields. And as far as container quadrupling goes, current numbers are 890,000 now. We question the Port argument that ‘quadrupling’ is a gross exaggeration because their projection is ‘only 3.5 million.’ 

We have not suggested a “no port” future, and elsewhere have raised a sensible alternative approach to what the Ports have currently proposed.

Of those who answered, 90% support the City Rail Link.

Respondents were offered the updated Economic Evaluation (May 2011) produced by Auckland Council and Auckland Transport for their appraisal.

Of those who responded, 80% do not support Auckland sprawling ever further into the countryside.

To read the full Heart of the City submission on the Auckland Plans (PDF 1.976kb) click here...

What would Auckland CBD be like in 2035?

The Rugby World Cup 2011 has only just finished and there is already talk of NZ hosting the 2035 tournament (view NZH Herald article here). So this got us thinking, with the 2011 tournament being deemed a success - What would hosting the cup would be like in 2035?

One of the biggest changes we are hoping to see by 2035 will be the introduction of a City Centre Rail Loop.

Proposed City Centre Rail Loop route - taken from the Draft Auckland Plan Executive Summary

Under the Auckland Plan, the loop would link Britomart Station with Aotea Square, K'Road, Mt Eden, Grafton, Newmarket and Parnell. As well as linking Auckland CBD with the Western lines.

We are in support of the City Centre Rail Loop and believe it is a worthwhile investment in Auckland's future.

It is important to give your feedback on the City Centre Rail Loop and other proposed developments such as the expansion of the Ports of Auckland and developments on Wynyard Quarter - Because after all, this will be the Auckland which you do business in, live in and play in.

Feedback on the 4 Auckland Plans is open til 4pm, Monday 31st October 2011.There are three ways you can provide your views

1. Via the We Only Get One Chance website
2. You can provide your feedback direct to Heart of the City by contacting us on (09) 379 8000 or via email info@hotcity.co.nz 
3. Alternatively, you can provide feedback direct to Auckland Council before 4pm, 31 October 2011.

You can also join in the conversation via

• Twitter - www.twitter.com/hotcity_akl
• Facebook - www.facebook.com/Heartofthecityakl

We've only just got Wynyard Quarter, lets not lose it

You may have recently seen our We Only Get One Chance campaign. Over the past couple of days the campaign has been receiving great feedback and getting some great coverage.

We feel it is important for the public to know more about the Draft Auckland Plans and what is proposed for Auckland.

Plans for the Wynyard Quarter. The pink buildings are the current park spaces

Take for example Wynyard Quarter - did you know that under the Draft Auckland Plan this whole area is zoned to have four-storey buildings? Some of the public spaces and the playground are, in fact, the footprints for buildings filled with shops, offices and apartments. Here at Heart of the City, we think that would be a crying shame.

It’s hard to get people excited about Draft Auckland Plans – but as you can see, the future of our public spaces and waterfront is at stake. What’s more, we only have a short time to have our say – submissions to the plan close on October 25.

So we have developed a website, weonlygetonechance.co.nz where we are asking for your response to a quick four-question poll on this and other important issues, including the expansion of the Ports and the Central City Rail Loop.

We want to show the Auckland Council that the people of this city value their waterfront and don’t want it closed off. We also want to show that we do care about the other issues we have highlighted as being critical to the future of Auckland.

On the website you can find information about proposed changes and our thoughts, as well as where to find the plan online and how to make a formal submission – and we encourage you to do so. We only have one chance to get this right.

Ports of Auckland reclamation plan.

Proposed City Rail Link - taken from the Draft Auckland Plan Executive Summary

Urban Limits - taken from the Draft Auckland Plan Executive Summary

NZ Herald Articles

 

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/local-government/news/article.cfm?c_id=250&objectid=10758331

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/local-government/news/article.cfm?c_id=250&objectid=10758408

High Street District's First Light

The High Street District celebrated last Friday with its inaugural ‘First Light’ event. A large number of retailers got in to the spirit, offering a fun array of in store promotions and events, Freyberg Square was alive with a fantastic line up of music, and from 4pm we enjoyed a High Street strictly for pedestrians. 

Some First Light revelers at Zambesi

The event was developed to show case the best of the new season, and what the district has to offer, and by all accounts everyone who was in involved had a great time. This event will be the first of many that the High Street Guild will be putting on, in partnership with Heart of the City and we say well done, and bring it on! 

Fashion images projected on a building in the district 

Find out more about the High Street District and the Guild at www.highstdistrict.co.nz 

Plans for our City's future...B+..with potential for A+

So, like so many other Aucklanders, we too are wading through the various tomes that outline the vision for our region, and our central city (in between watching some great games of footie). This is really exciting times for the city, and there are some fantastic, transformational ideas here, particularly in the Central City Masterplan and the Waterfront Plan.

The emphasis on great design will make fantastic places for people, following hot on the heels of the success of spaces such as Wynyard Quarter, Fort Street and Elliott Street. The idea of the CBD rail tunnel reincarnates something that many Aucklanders lament – Robbie’s dream of a metro system. 

Proposed: A green carpet along the length of Victoria Street connecting Albert Park and Victoria Park

We love many of the ideas. All bold and good transformational thinking. We are heartened that the role of the business and retail sector in the Central City is highlighted, and we know that many of our precincts will flourish with the additional public realm improvements proposed in these plans, and be attractive for the Tourist dollar.

The future of High Street to support the precinct's boutique dining and retail?

If we have concerns, they are around how the fine words and pictures all ‘fit together’ – the need for the transport strategy that will conclude how cars and buses will be accommodated, in a more people focused future. 


The Ports expansion is an important economic driver but we would like to know how our roads would handle a quadrupling the number of container trucks, and how this meets the needs for the future vision of a more downscaled Quay Street. 

The future for Quay Street, but what happens to Port traffic? 

We would like to see the Walking and Cycling across the Harbour Bridge acknowledged in the documents, and feel that Heritage should feature more prominently.

We think these plans are a really good start, and if we had to give it a rating we would give it a B+ pass .. the challenge now is, amongst all of this RWC excitement, that Aucklanders make time to engage in the process and make it into an A+ as the timeline for submissions is perilously short – one month!!

St Patrick’s Cathedral Shines On

St Patrick’s Cathedral is, finally, all lit up. The Cathedral’s incredible architecture is now permanently lit at night, following the official opening of the long awaited lighting project on Sunday 11 September. This completes a trilogy of projects, including the square’s award winning upgrade in late 2009 and the Cathedral’s restoration earlier in 2007, and we love it.


This is the perfect way to kick start the city’s heritage festival, opening later this week. http://www.biglittlecity.co.nz/Events/Auckland_Heritage_Festival_2011 


Images Courtesy of St Patrick’s Cathedral Archive

Auckland’s Restaurant Month – Serving up the BIG little City with great success!

Auckland Restaurant Month has wrapped.  Held in August 2011, the inaugural event featured more than 60 participating restaurants in the central city, and raised awareness of the fantastic offering we have here in the central city. We couldn’t think of a better way to hunker down from the last of the winter chills, with delicious delights from across our city’s finest. 

And what a huge 3 weeks they were, of great eating and thousands of amateur Auckland foodies-turn-food-critics. After an outstanding 5,215 People’s Choice votes received during the course of the month, the winner of the 2011 BIG little City People’s Choice Restaurant Winner, was Ebisu. A new star in the city’s eating experience.

Other Auckland Restaurant Month Awards, voted by the public went to:

Best Experience - Ebisu

Best Food - Ebisu

Best Ambience – Bruschetteria

Best Service – O’Connell St Bistro

And it doesn't stop there. MarketView Limited were commissioned by HOTC to determine how consumer spending was impacted by the event (Marketview traced 10,000 customers that used BNZ credit cards to dine at the target restaurants between 28 July – 14 August 2011, and compared this to all Auckland restaurants. The results were outstanding.

….“Overall spending with the target restaurant list (Restaurant Month participants) increased by 44.9% over the same period as last year. There was a corresponding lift in transaction volumes and customer numbers (40.9% more cardholders spending during ARM). Spending at other restaurants in Auckland was up during the same period by only 3.4%. The increase in customer numbers brought people into town from throughout the region.

Auckland Restaurant Month was about drawing great attention to the city centre’s dining offer, during the quieter colder months of winter…but that’s no reason to stop enjoying the best of the central city now that the weather has turned warmer….there’s plenty going on to keep us entertained, and not least Rugby.

We can’t wait till Friday night’s opening event and the fun, great rugby and buzz that the tournament is sure to bring to the central city and the wider region. Get out there and enjoy it Auckland! 

Walking and Cycling on the Auckland Harbour Bridge

Auckland is our gateway to 100% Pure NZ. 70% of tourists enter Godzone via the City of Sails but spend only two nights here – the day they arrive and the day they leave for the smell of sulphur and further afield.

So what’s all this cycling talk about– it’s not as if the penny farthing was invented yesterday but it sure is getting more air time. We are building cycleways the length of the country – that’s where we seem to invest most of our tourism $$$’s.

Here at HOTC we think marrying the commuter and health benefits of cycling in Akld beside our clean green brand has some real merit.  The latest proposal to cling a cycleway onto the Harbour bridge clip ons is inspirational.

So, we’ve been supporting the Pathways Steering Group developing their plans thru a maze of transport engineers and local and central government politicians and their battalions of officers. The boring technical stuff is now all agreed on and we get the growing sense that it is now a real possibility. The plans look great and come with a great lighting show that highlights the bridge across our harbour.

Sure there are some commuter benefits but for us the real win is the tourism bonanza. In San Francisco more than 80% of their international tourists walk the Golden Gate bridge – in fact they have just had to double the size of the bridge bus park and bike hire facilities.

This is a project whose train is running – fast. Take 5 minutes and check out www.getacross.org.nz and tell us what you think.

Download our Insiders guide to Downtown Auckland

We are pleased to announce that our Insiders Guide is now available for downloading in ebook, ipad, iphone and android formatting here...

From late August the guide will be distributed as a hard copy booklet via buses, hotels, rental cars, i-SITES and key visitor retail locations. Based on our extensive and on-going consultation we know that there will be no other guide like it with such extensive content on the downtown city area and with such high quality production values and design.

More information on the Insiders Guide to Downtown Auckland

We see our role over the period of the World Cup, to ensure that international and domestic visitors to the tournament and Auckland central city get to experience as much of what the inner city has to offer as possible to guarantee a memorable stay in Auckland for the visitors and a memorable economic outcome for our businesses.

To meet that goal we have produced an Insider’s Guide. We acknowledge that the best of downtown Auckland can often be hard to find and 'off the beaten track' so our guide is based around making the CBD easy to navigate and definitely much more than just Queen Street – or Queens Wharf. We have divided the central city into 6 distinct 'neighbourhoods', together with the great businesses that are in these areas. The information in the guide is also presented from the perspective of a ‘local' or an 'insider', because often the best things that you experience in an unfamiliar city are those things that are recommended to you by someone who lives there and knows their way around.