North Taranaki Visitor Centre

The North Egmont visitor centre had served Taranaki Maunga for forty years and was worn out. Its replacement is being led by mana whenua, the first time Te Atiawa have built on their own maunga. Te Kotahitanga o Te Atiawa Trust, with DOC and Kānoa, is building a new whare at the mountain's northern gateway.

The whare will hold a café and a manaaki space for wānanga, events and overnight stays, and will look toward the tihi, the summit. Te Atiawa will own and run it, and lease the visitor-centre area to DOC for its visitor services, the iwi as landlord and the Crown as tenant on their own maunga.

The site is unforgiving, high on the maunga inside a national park, where the weather turns almost daily. RCP has run the project from the early brief and budget through to construction, as project manager and Engineer to the Contract. Building anything here needs a DOC concession over protected conservation land, so much of the job has been getting the design through that approval and the wider consents while holding a tight programme set by the government funding.

RCP works under Te Atiawa's leadership, alongside the Trust and Puketapu hapū, so their cultural narratives carry into the building and the decisions stay with the iwi.

The old centre has come down, and the new whare is being built to open in 2027, a place that will carry Te Atiawa's stories on the mountain and welcome the manuhiri who come to walk it.