Our growing city must maintain a healthy heart

Bakehouse on Howick owner Nathaniel Mason said there were a number of factors behind the bakery closing its doors, but two of them were parking problems and customers being drawn away from the centre of the city by the opening of new businesses on the urban outskirts.

"The parking here is ridiculous, it's horrendous ... when you're fighting in here for a park and you have to walk five kays down the road just for a sandwich, it's not worth it," Mr Mason said of the Howick Street site.

It's not a problem that customers face at the Bakehouse on the Boulevard outlet in Kelso, he said.

Parking is a perpetual topic of debate in this city and those in the two main camps when it comes to this subject will probably each see something different in Mr Mason's words.

Those who are adamant that a multi-storey car park is needed somewhere in the CBD will say that one central site, with more car parks than you can shake a gear stick at, would solve the problem.

Their argument would be that Bathurst is growing, locals can no longer expect to get a spot right outside the cafe or chemist and they will quickly get used to parking in a central location where they know there will be a space available and walking the short distance to where they want to go.

"Short distance" are the important words here: build a multi-storey car park too far from the CBD and locals will wonder whether they might as well have just walked from home.

Those on the other side of this debate will say that Bathurstians who can't get a park out the front of the shops in the centre of town will simply find somewhere else to go - and in a city of satellite shopping centres and growing developments such as the Gateway at Kelso, there's certainly no lack of options.

So who's right? Who knows. That's what makes the topic of development in and around the CBD so endlessly interesting or frustrating, depending on how you feel.

What we shouldn't be afraid to do is be ambitious - to strive to combine the best of our small, easily driveable CBD as it was and the best of the bigger, busier, more bustling CBD that we are becoming.

We're not going to be able to get everything we want, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try.