Matt Cowley Tauranga City Councillor

There's a fantastic video on YouTube showing the Historic Village in it's glory days in the early 1990s. The efforts of those volunteers was extraordinary.

Since then though, the village has been through an economic recession, changing focus from successive councils, turnover of tenants, and less volunteers able to help out.

Located at the heart of Tauranga's avenues, next to the city's busy hospital, a life-line has been thrown to the village.

The council this week agreed for the Tauranga Electricity Consumers Trust to buy part of the village to build its new community hub for community organisations.

Many community groups and not-for-profits already call the Historic Village home. There are further ideas to create a retail and entertainment hub in the heart of the village.

The TECT project will provide support for community groups, bring people to the village to make the retail offering more attractive, and enhance the very soggy green area for events by improving the drainage.

TECT's building platform will also double as a stage to enable more events to use the lawn.

I believe the ‘living village' concept of the 1990s has been and gone. I'm sure we can find other ways to keep the memory alive, such as creating a mini-exhibition in one of the existing buildings.

The TECT project itself will not revive the village alone. But it is the cornerstone investment that's needed if I'm going to continue to support the village into the future.

Feel free to email me your thoughts (matt.cowley@tauranga.govt.nz), call/text me on 0276989548, and follow me at www.facebook.com/a.younger.voice.