Shrinking Hamilton's CBD footprint has been suggested as one way to better manage the central city.

Shrinking Hamilton's central city footprint, bowling dead retail areas in favour of apartments and holding back development of land on the city's fringes are just some of the ideas to boost downtown's flagging fortunes.

A major new plan aimed at transforming central Hamilton will be released within the next two months, but already one overseas commentator said the city's downtown had reached "crisis point".

Denver-based Chris Adams, who has a background in tourism, including marketing US cities with revived CBDs, grew up in Hamilton and was shocked at the state of the inner city during a recent visit home.

He called it "an embarrassment" and argued bold initiatives are needed to reverse the city centre's fortunes.

Hamilton City Council needs to develop a crisis response, Adams said. He recommended a host of initiatives, such as creating a themed entertainment precinct and establishing downtown festivals.

His most radical suggestion was to knock down an entire city block and repopulate the space with apartments and town offices.

"I think the city's leadership is failing to understand the scale of the challenge and they need to think big and act big," Adams said. "The central city creates a perception that Hamilton is not a place to visit or invest in or live in. So it's very important everyone gets on top of this."

Hamilton Mayor Julie Hardaker welcomed debate, but said all of Adams' suggestions had been talked over when drafting the council's central city transformation plan.

The draft document will be released soon and be based on an analysis of how the CBD's economy works. The plan will also be informed by examples of smaller cities around the world that have successfully transformed their CBDs.

Despite Hamilton's urban spread, Hardaker said the central city is important because it holds Hamilton's identity.

"It is at crisis point? Of course not, but what I would say is, historically, many cities have responded to the challenge by doing physical changes. But that's just one aspect of it," she said.

Hardaker said there is strong business interest in the central city and the challenge for private-sector owners is to offer quality buildings that meet market needs.

"I think it's time that Hamiltonians understand that changing the central city is an evolution and it won't happen overnight."

Central Business Association general manager Sandy Turner✓ agreed it's an exaggeration to say downtown is in crisis, pointing to the development of Centre Place shopping mall, the Grantham Street development and the Fastlane Fitness gym on Victoria Street as examples of rejuvenation.

"We've had multimillion-dollar developments going on in the city and investors don't spend their money in an area that's dying," Turner said.

However, a challenge the central city faces is that it has an "enormous footprint" for its population. Turner favours creating a smaller, better defined CBD, with residential dwellings on the fringes.

"The benefit of a smaller CBD would be you'd have a very crisp, professional, smart-looking area and it would be easier to manage," she said.

John Lawrenson, chief executive of The Lawrenson Group, said he has worked hard to create a hospitality precinct in the city, investing $8 million revitalising the southern end of Victoria with bars and restaurants.

Although many redevelopment ideas sound exciting, such as turning the city to face the river, the crunch is who should foot the bill.

"It's not for the council to come in here and spend money trying to fix things, because they spent millions trying to redevelop Hood Street and they got it very, very wrong," Lawrenson said.

"It's up to the private sector and market forces to determine whether or not to develop the central city and at the moment, it doesn't make economic sense because property developers just don't get the returns."

Waikato University professor of environmental planning Iain White said the best way to rejuvenate the area is to vastly increase the number of people living within a 15 minute walk of the CBD.

Hamilton has a larger footprint than Paris and it's time the city has a "difficult conversation" about constraining the availability of land on Hamilton's periphery, White said.

"As soon as you have people living in the CBD, businesses will just flourish and come in. But as long as you keep building houses on the periphery, it's going to be very difficult to make apartment-living financially possible. Without apartment living, you're going to get decline in the CBD," White said.

Hamilton Deputy Mayor Gordon Chesterman, who chaired the city's heritage advisory panel, supports inner-city living, but said apartment developments have to be targeted for their audience.

The city had "some lovely older buildings" that could be redeveloped successfully.

"One of the very early buildings to be re-used was The Bank and I think that's been a success. Another example is the Sudima Hotel Hamilton on the corner of Collingwood Street and Victoria Street, which has had millions spent on its revamp and is absolutely outstanding," Chesterman said.

He said the CBD succeeds after 7pm, when young people flock to the bars and restaurants.

"Hamilton's downtown is a fantastic place at night, so we're half right. It's just during the day we've lost the excitement out to The Base."

Chris Adams' ideas to transform central Hamilton:

* Downtown events

* Create a permanent marketplace

* Children's attractions

* Better city-river interface

* Create a themed entertainment precinct

* Improve public transport

* Create 1000 additional apartments and town offices by 2025