‘The ball’s been dropped’: Timaru councillor seeks update on plan for Caroline Bay
Saturday, 10 May 2025
A senior council staffer says the ball had been dropped over a failure to share a new plan for the future of Timaru’s Caroline Bay with the community that paid for it.
Timaru District councillor Stacey Scott, who also sits on the board of Venture Timaru (VT) as its chairperson, said the Caroline Bay Master Plan had been completed about a year ago and asked for an update on it.
“It hasn’t gone out for community consultation or anything like that, it’s just been finished and put in a box.”
Speaking during Tuesday’s council meeting, Scott said VT’s statement of intent outlined that the organisation had been expected to pick up and implement the plan.
However, she said they had since been told not to touch it.
“My question is, what is happening … who is in charge of it, who is taking ownership of it?
“Everyone in this room talks about it being the jewel in our crown … what are we doing?”
Scott said implementation of the plan had been struck off the list of tasks for VT, the region’s economic development and tourism agency, as it had been “instructed not to do anything”.
Scott wanted to know who was picking up the work because “it’s really important”, and likened it to the CityTown project.
In an update in June 2024, the council said its CityTown consultants, Isthmus, were finalising the “CityTown Master Plan, and an additional Caroline Bay Master Plan”.
It said the plans were based on feedback “from hundreds of stakeholders” and would “provide guidance for private investors looking to anticipate the direction that city centre development (and development around the Caroline Bay area) will take over the coming years”.
In August, the council released the master plan to breathe new life into Timaru’s CBD — the first major overhaul in more than 25 years.
The master plan split the CBD area into six key character areas or civic spaces — Caroline Bay, the Bay Hill, North Stafford, the Creative Town Heart (the area around central Stafford St), the Green Edge (including the library and council chambers) and South Stafford.
In releasing it, the council confirmed it had committed $6m for capital projects in the first five years of the 2024-2034 Long Term Plan.
Responding to Scott, the council’s infrastructure group manager, Andrew Dixon, said the plan had been consulted on “amongst stakeholders last year” before being put into a final format.
“There’s a few little tweaks that still need to be made and the document has not been socialised with the community,” Dixon said.
He said the project had been developed by the CityTown team and, as that had now ceased, it had been passed over to the council’s parks team.
“The parks … people have been … busy in setting up the in-house parks unit and it has been one of the ones that, I guess, has … the ball’s been dropped on it,” Dixon said
“I will make a commitment to pick it up and get it out there and start to socialise it because it is basically ready to go.
“And, if we can use VT that’s great.“
Scott told Dixon that comment left her a “little bit frustrated” because the work had been listed in VT’s statement of intent which had been signed off by council.
Mayor Nigel Bowen suggested councillors have a chat about it first, with councillor Stu Piddington agreeing.
“I think we just need a workshop to look at it, see what it says … I don’t want to go out with these grand ideas and we go ‘oops no money, thanks very much’,” Piddington said.
“I take your point Stacey, I don’t want it to be the third master plan for Caroline Bay that sits in the bottom drawer.”
Bowen asked for the document to be circulated, with Dixon saying he would do so on Wednesday. The council would make a time to discuss it, Bowen said.