Te Awamutu is getting its first traffic lights in more than 30 years \u2014 thanks to a new Mitre 10 development recently green-lit for the town.<\/p>\n
Waip\u0101 District Council’s private plan change will rezone land at 638 Cambridge Rd, next to the local Pak’nSave, from residential to commercial, clearing the way for a new 13,000-square-metre Mitre 10 and cafe. <\/p>\n
Plan Change 35 was lodged by 638 Ltd, which already owned and operated Te Awamutu’s existing Mitre 10.<\/p>\n
In exchange for the rezoning, the developer will fund a package of upgrades to Cambridge Road \u2014 chief among them, new traffic lights. <\/p>\n
The town hasn’t had a working set of traffic lights since one at the intersection of Alexandra, Sloane and Arawata Streets was pulled out in the 1990s.<\/p>\n
The upgrade also included a shared walking and cycling path, pedestrian facilities, a pedestrian crossing, and a new wetland.<\/p>\n
The plan change would become operative once formally notified by the Waip\u0101 District Council, provided no appeals were lodged with the Environment Court.<\/p>\n
Te Awamutu, population just shy of 14,000, is the Waikato’s fifth-largest urban centre and the birthplace of Crowded House’s Neil and Tim Finn, who name-checked the town in their 1986 song Mean to Me.<\/p>\n
Its population has grown more slowly than the national average in recent years \u2014 up 0.6% annually over the five years to 2025, against 1% nationally.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Te Awamutu is getting its first traffic lights in more than 30 years \u2014 thanks to a new…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":582955,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[9001,687,111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-582954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-hamilton-waikato","tag-housing-and-infrastructure","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582954","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=582954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582954\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/582955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=582954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=582954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=582954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}