We are excited to announce the appointment of a broker for an Urban Dream Brokerage in Masterton, helping enable the community to trial ideas for the use of space in the CBD.
Anneke Wolterbeek is Masterton-based and will be supported by a both a Masterton advisory group and the teams at Letting Space and Massey University’s Toi Aria, Design for Public Good programme.
A former secretary and committees’ chair for the Rotary club of Masterton, Wolterbeek has been an active member of the EOC team (Wairarapa Emergency Operations Centre) of Wellington Region Emergency Management Office (REMO) and Chair of the Rotary District International Friendship Exchange Committee. Passionate about community development and sustainability, she is treasurer for the Wellington Region Waste Forum, club secretary for the Wairarapa Beekeepers Club and is the organiser of the monthly Wairarapa Dogwalk Club.
Wolterbeek previously worked for the Greater Wellington Regional Council as a Environmental Policy Advisor in Masterton, and prior to that; in policy and resource planning with the New Zealand Transport Agency and Whangarei District Council. She originally hails from the Netherlands where she has worked in natural resource policy planning and advising. She has also held positions within the environmental, agricultural and science fields working with local government, government ministries and universities. She has worked on sustainable housing projects and Community Neighbourhood committees that were concerned with the service and spatial development of a city.
“I enjoy being able to positively influence and improve the physical and social environment of our community in Masterton,” says Anneke, “and have plenty of work and life experience in other parts of the world as well. I am passionate about life in rural New Zealand and the Wairarapa. This job as part of the Our Future Masterton project is special to me: it is a chance to help the community realise creative ideas with business, property owners, Iwi and council that explore vision for the future of Masterton.”
The Urban Dream Brokerage Masterton is part of a wider Our Future Masterton programme. Following a series of community workshops in 2016, Our Future Masterton is now getting up and running to help enable a citizen driven 50-year vision for the Masterton town centre.
“The nature of our town centre is changing, and this programme recognises that,” says District Council chief executive Pim Borren. “It puts more of the ownership and control of planning for our future in the hands of the full diversity of the people who will inherit it, not just council staff or any particular interest group in Masterton. We very excited to sponsor this project.”
“This isn’t a project about making immediate permanent changes in the Masterton centre," says Letting Space's Mark Amery, "rather it provides a space to trial fun, engaging ideas from the public, who best know their town. It’s an open project, gathering past ideas that have been left unrealised together with the new.”
Reports from the 2016 workshops are now available to view here on the Masterton District Council website, and a Facebook page is a portal for information about the project. Here the public can keep up to date with updates.
Urban Dream Brokerage is a programme Letting Space already run successfully in Wellington, Dunedin and Porirua with council, community trust and chamber of commerce support. There will shortly be a call out publicly for ideas. Urban Dream Brokerage brokers the use of vacant commercial space and public space for innovative ideas generated by the community, encouraging the revitalisation of CBDs and testing out new uses for public areas. The Urban Dream Brokerage service has facilitated over 70 projects over three centres, and has been heralded by property owners, community groups and councils alike nationally in helping revive CBDs. 70% of the 34 properties occupied in Wellington city over the last four years have been re-tenanted after activation.