Everything is connected to everything else. So when restaurants, cafes and bars start falling like flies, you better ask why.
When grand old department stores call it quits and iconic restaurants shut up shop something is seriously wrong.
Farmers, retailers and restaurateurs all understand the commercial facts of life. They understand they are dependent on the quality of microbial activity in the soil, of the street location, the population, the supply of utilities. Yet, in the time it takes to say ‘SuperCity', the delicate ecosystem that is the Central Business District, as well as localised shopping villages from West Lynn to Glen Eden, from Otahuhu to Takapuna, have been drastically effected.
War in our streets has been declared, not with guns or bombs but with a platoon of orange cones and the odd stop-go sign. Hurricane fences, akin to barbed wire barricades, precede the diggers that rumble into place like tanks. The perpetrators of this madness are friendly local contractors but behind the scenes it’s the executives of multi-national infrastructure companies who pull the strings. These captains of industry gleefully unleash their artillery, dragging out the works as long as possible. This did not happen over night, once National and Labour adopted the ill-conceived SuperCity legislation, the global old boys network leapt into action.
A beachhead of engineers and town planners infiltrated Auckland Council and Auckland Transport. Ludo Campbell-Reid (a failed property developer from South Africa) was drafted as the commander in chief by then Mayor Len Brown and it was game on. City Vision stalwarts like Pippa Coom and Richard Northey threw their entire weight behind the 'Safe Streets' campaign. It all sounded so good, so safe, so clean and green. But behind it is the City Centre Masterplan, a radical attempt to change our city by stealth.
I don’t blame Coom or her acolyte Alex Bonham for everything that’s wrong. Both are well meaning busybodies, but their narrow understanding of retail and the delicate balance of commerce means they have unwittingly aided and abetted the juggernaut. As a born-again zealot, Bonham has buzzed about spreading her ‘woke doctrine’ terrorising the local population and insinuating our city streets are chronically unsafe.
This whipped up fear, as manifest in urban parents like Boopsie Maran, is regularly aired and amplified in the boardroom of Auckland Transport, then repeated by Radio NZ’s fledgling journalists too slack to seek out the full story. They ignore the blinding truth that our streets were built by well-trained engineers with experience, in favour of progress – ripping up the old to spend, spend, spend on the new.
Town planning graduates scribbling on whiteboards simply redraw the frontline, forcing the road builders to make it up as they go along. Elected councillors hypnotised by slick power-points and pinging on bad plunger coffee are unable to oppose any plan.
Wayne Brown’s current mayoral attempts to annihilate road cones is admirable, but unless he succeeds in getting the Minister of Transport Simeon Brown to take command and overrule the out of control Auckland Transport, his actions will be equivalent to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Public rabble rousers turn up to council meetings to air their concerns on streets, potholes and stolen car parks effecting shops and livelihoods, but nothing hits the NZ Herald. Award-winning reporter Simon Wilson is too obsessed by his own Copenhagen dreams to report this public outrage. In print and radio his words swirl with superiority, feeding the anxious, the ignorant and the plain stupid.
Meanwhile, Julie Anne Genter’s green army has spread cycleway mania nationwide, while retailers from Island Bay to Karangahape Road prepare to evacuate their empty shops, leaving the drunks, the druggies and the 501s to occupy re-renovated street scapes. "Short term pain for long term gain,” is the catch cry of the apostles of progress. The fact that they have strangled the complex ecosystem of commerce is beyond them.
Waitematā Local board chair Genevieve Sage seduced by the Central Rail Link peep show, proclaims on Facebook, “I think the majority of the CBD small businesses can’t wait for the CRL to open. Positivity is a powerful tool.” However, she refuses to hear the death knell of small businesses and sniffs at the idea of council compensation.
Of course, the Government could immediately step in and restructure Auckland Transport by changing the SuperCity legislation and demanding the resignation of Dean Kimpton (CEO of Auckland Transport) and Phil Wilson (CEO of Auckland Council). That should do it. (Lisa Prager)
30 July 2024
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