Big Ideas, Big Opportunities!

Forget the power outages in Auckland, Nelson City glowed brightly last night with the combined energy of more than 60 representatives from the retail, business and community sectors with a key interest in Nelson City.

A workshop was hosted by Uniquely Nelson at NMIT to explore the ideas, challenges and opportunities for the city and bring the combined brains of the city’s key stakeholders to the think tank.

Whilst it’s too early to detail specific findings until all the results have been collated and summarised, some of the big ideas that were discussed included:

• Nelson’s lifestyle as a key factor in attracting and retaining skilled people to live and work in Nelson.
• The need to build on Nelson City’s boutique offerings, arts, culture, events, festivals and attractions to create a vibrant CBD.
• More opportunities for business, government and industry groups to meet and collaborate on the big opportunities and unique challenges facing our city.
• Use it or lose it – the need to foster community pride in our city, for both residents and visitors to embrace the CBD as a vital part of the regions’ economic health and to support our retail, hospitality and business sectors.

Uniquely Nelson will be compiling the findings from the workshop and producing a strategic plan that addresses many of these findings and ways Uniquely Nelson can contribute to the revitalisation of Nelson’s city centre.  This plan will be presented at Uniquely Nelson’s Annual General Meeting on Tuesday 21st October.  More details on the AGM to follow soon.