The trial decision was made during the pre-election period<\/a>, with council chief executive Andrew Moraes working on a direction to cut costs<\/a>.<\/p>\n Eight councillors, however, decided the trial was not proving successful.<\/p>\n Merepeka Raukawa-Tait said she had heard from many residents who believed the move to Kuirau Park had been a \u201cfoolish decision\u201d.<\/p>\n She believed the market was a strong social investment in the city and that any delay in the decision might result in there being \u201cno market left\u201d to save after summer.<\/p>\n Ben Sandford, Fisher Wang and Te Rika Temara-Benfell were all frequent patrons of the night market and agreed the trial had not worked out.<\/p>\n Trevor Maxwell and Don Paterson agreed the market was necessary to retain \u201cvibrancy\u201d in the inner city, and Gregg Brown had no objection to the return.<\/p>\n Mayor Tania Tapsell, Deputy Mayor Sandra Kai Fong and councillor Karen Barker voted against the motion.<\/p>\n Tapsell said she was \u201cslightly disappointed\u201d not to see the comprehensive February report and did not want to make a \u201creactionary\u201d decision.<\/p>\n She also expressed concern that the night market might fall outside the core services central Government has mandated local councils to focus on. <\/p>\n Barker said the investigation was to \u201creduce costs\u201d and that the trial was doing that.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are ratepayers who do not use the night market who will have to pay for it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n She also believed the market would not be considered an essential service and preferred to wait to see the full report before making a decision.<\/p>\n Moraes said the cost of traffic management might increase due to health and safety concerns in T\u016bt\u0101nekai St, costs which would likely fall on the ratepayer.<\/p>\n Cowboy Roast House owner Farnoud Rahimi Mansour operates a shop on T\u016bt\u0101nekai St and a stall at the Night Market, and has opposed the trial relocation from the start.<\/p>\n \u201cI think most people will be happy,\u201d Mansour told Local Democracy Reporting of the decision to end the trial.<\/p>\n He said he had seen comments online, with \u201cabout 95% of people\u201d wanting the market to return.<\/p>\n He had lost some of his regular customers, who he hoped would now come back.<\/p>\n Reg Hennessy, the owner of Hennessy\u2019s Irish Bar on T\u016bt\u0101nekai St and who was part of the group who initially pushed for the night market 15 years ago, was \u201cpleased\u201d with the decision.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a win for both common sense and for the popular opinion of the residents of Rotorua,\u201d Hennessy said.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll be pleased to see all the stallholders back into the street the first Thursday back, all smiling and happy to be home.\u201d<\/p>\n He was happy the council had recognised that a \u201cpoor decision\u201d had been made and had moved to rectify it.<\/p>\n He hoped this would be an opportunity to make more use of the inner city.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s so much potential, and it\u2019s just how much they can use their imagination,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n The council\u2019s group manager of community experience, Alex Wilson, said a survey on the Night Market trial had received about 300 responses. These were still being processed, but the majority shared a preference to return to the prior location.<\/p>\n She said the market could shift back within \u201ca couple of weeks\u201d, although an official return date was yet to be finalised.<\/p>\n Investigations into the ultimate future of the Night Markets, including the potential of new management, would continue, with expressions of interest opening in January.<\/p>\n Mathew Nash is a Local Democracy Reporting journalist based at the Rotorua Daily Post. He has previously written for SunLive, been a regular contributor to RNZ and was a football reporter in Britain for eight years.<\/p>\n – LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He said returning to the inner city would help businesses regain tourist foot traffic and after-work customers. A…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":176714,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[74,11164,1550,2199,5205,36302,42,12130,39083,5365,225,3234,2683,43,2551,8143,13688,1527,1327,38715,61,40,38,41,39,54,22052,7246,1533],"class_list":["post-176713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-after","tag-began","tag-centre","tag-city","tag-council","tag-ending","tag-headlines","tag-inner","tag-kuirau","tag-lakes","tag-market","tag-months","tag-move","tag-news","tag-night","tag-park","tag-relocation","tag-return","tag-rotorua","tag-rotoruas","tag-to","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-trial","tag-voted","tag-votes","tag-will"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176713\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/176714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The Rotorua Night Market. Photo \/ Jo Doherty<\/p>\n
Hennessy’s Irish Bar owner Reg Hennessy. Photo \/ File<\/p>\n