'There needs to be a real drive, by everyone': Can Auckland get its mojo back?
Saturday, 28 May 2022
In the golden age just before the pandemic, Auckland was having a moment. The central city was being transformed by luxe new developments like Commercial Bay, the food scene was exploding and the arts and culture sector was buzzing.
But Covid, and multiple lockdowns, have cast a shadow over our biggest city; shops have emptied out, restaurants and cafés have closed their doors – including some of Auckland’s most iconic institutions – and the CBD has become a home to crime, rough sleepers and gangs.
Police, who announced last week officers would be routinely armed while on patrol, report a 30% increase in violent crime since the pandemic.
The ripples of ramraids and gang warfare have spread into the suburbs, with dozens of reported shootings so far this year, more than 10 just in the last week, some of them targeting houses where children sleep.
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* Opportunity beckons as rents soar everywhere, but plunge in Auckland's CBD
* A double shot of hope for New Zealand's cafes after lockdown
**
Equally troubling, recent dark deaths have cast a pall over the city; Lena Zheng Harrap, 27, allegedly murdered on a Mt Albert walkway. And on May 24, the brutal stabbing of volunteer firefighter Thomas Coombes, also on a Mt Albert walkway.
Can Auckland find its mojo again?
A tale of two cities
From one side of upmarket restaurant Ahi, in Auckland’s newest luxury development Commercial Bay, the view takes in the sparkling waters of Auckland Harbour.
It’s where the corporate set like to lunch – and lately, they have been returning in numbers, as the Commercial Bay offices finally start to fill up after Covid emptied out the CBD.
“We’re busy again… which is amazing,” says Ahi general manager Chris Martin.
“Our corporate crowd has returned to us, and they are a really loyal crowd.”
The other side of Ahi takes in a different view, of Auckland’s Britomart Square. “I see everything from up here,” says Martin.
On the weekends, “everything” is mostly young people behaving badly, especially late at night. But even during the daytime, it’s obvious that something has changed in the CBD.
Recently, one of Martin’s staff – “he’d been working his butt off all day”, says Martin – popped out to stock up on some groceries between the lunch and dinner service. He called in later from the hospital.
He’d been mugged, in the middle of the day, for his shoes.
Edgy is how some people describe the atmosphere in the CBD these days. At certain times, even frightening.
Former National leader Simon Bridges is seeing the city with fresh eyes after moving from Tauranga with his family to take up a new position as Auckland Business Chamber chief.
He’s seen the queues outside luxury goods stores like Gucci, and Louis Vuitton.
But he’s also been warned about staying too late in the central city by friends, and people have expressed concern about the family moving into an apartment in the central city with young children.
“And in fact, we were very close to getting ourselves into a large apartment. And then this week, a dead body was found on the street outside. And that’s incredibly sad, and I don’t know the circumstances, but you know, it was all cordoned off, and I saw that on my run. It makes you think twice.”
At a panel discussion on Auckland’s future last week, concerns were expressed about the face the city would present to tourists when the borders reopen later this year.
Martin, an Australian, says Auckland at night has a very different feel to Sydney and Melbourne, where he worked previously.
“I feel confident being out in Melbourne and Sydney and in London and various other cities at night because the city is still alive at night, it’s still vibrant, there are still things going on, places are open.” But in Auckland “everything is closed”.
Like others spoken to by Stuff, Martin sees the city’s future lying in bringing people back to the CBD; that includes events, festivals, markets, concerts, but also encouraging the hospitality sector to stay open later so people are encouraged to venture out.
Bridges says Auckland needs to be bold to get people back into the CBD.
“There needs to be a real drive, by everyone, and with encouragement from council, and possibly even central government, to get plays, theatre, music shows going again.”
A pandemic, and an influx of the city’s most vulnerable people
During Auckland’s lockdowns, the city’s homeless were moved to inner-city hotels by the government, which was worried about the spread of Covid among Auckland’s most vulnerable, who are usually out of the reach of social services.
Those hotels were where you would find Aaron Hendry of Lifewise most days during the lockdown; as the organisation’s youth housing leader, Hendry was there to support young people who ended up in hotels alongside others with equally difficult problems.
“We did see an increase of people who were in critical need coming into the city… part of that was due to the leveraging of the hotels for emergency accommodation and that brought a lot of really vulnerable people into one place,” says Hendry.
“The environments we were putting in them, well, they weren't liveable, really, and they shouldn't be called housing at all. So we took people who had some really extreme mental health and addiction challenges, who were experiencing some of the worst of inequality within New Zealand, and we put them all into facilities, which weren’t designed for long term accommodation, without the correct wraparound support that they needed to thrive. And that was never going to work out very well.”
But the pandemic had also exacerbated and laid bare many of the existing problems around poverty and inequality in Auckland.
“You know, you can’t have a conversation around the increase of crime without also recognising that over the last few years of lockdown, we've had an increase of extreme inequality, and also extreme poverty that we're seeing in the Auckland City Centre.
“For example, the conversation around the ramraids that's been going on, many of the young men that I know, that have been engaged in that behaviour, are young men that are experiencing homelessness, who don't have enough to survive, they’re on a benefit, struggling to make ends meet, who have grown up in a society, in a world, that has basically said, you don't belong, we don't care about you.
“They don't feel like they have any ownership in society. They don't feel like they belong to our community. They're finding ways to survive in a world that has from their perspective, abandoned them. And that's a problem.”
“It’s more than a government problem. It’s a community problem.”
Festivals, and more restaurants, weren’t the solution.
Lifewise was advocating for purpose built accommodation, with wrap around services “so if someone is needing that support right now, and they go to a specific space where they have the support, they're able to get that support quickly as possible, and are then either reintegrated back into the community or transferred into the services they actually relevant to them. We need that both for young people and adults,“ Hendry said.
But funding and political buy-in for such facilities remained a problem, even after the pandemic revealed the dire need.
Connection is key
Auckland councillor and mayoral candidate Efeso Collins also worries about young people and their sense of place after two years of lockdowns.
“We've talked a lot about pivoting. And I think it's not just businesses that are pivoting, but young people; every facet of our life feels like it's going through some change. I think people are looking for something they can hold on to, and one of the things I've been thinking a lot about… it's that the festivals, the arts and culture, the part of our society's soul - they really need some attention at the moment. We need to reconnect, and we need to be celebrating the fact that we've managed to get through Covid.
“I think, when we are looking at the ramraids… what shows is that level of frustration from social isolation, and people feeling like they just haven't got enough to get by; it means that we turn to the worst part of ourselves.
“I think it's time that we’ve got to start thinking about how to feed our soul….because connection does feed your soul. I know, for instance, how hard it’s been for many members of our church, and people are like please, let’s just get off the Zoom or Facebook.”
We need to find the next 25%
Back at Commercial Bay, precinct chief executive Scott Pritchard sees a city that is slowly coming back to life. But there is still a long way to go.
“It’s definitely busier. But it's busier in the context of perhaps where we've been over the last, you know, six to 12 months. We're still quite a way away from our peak, in terms of the number of people that are just going through Commercial Bay, and that's bearing in mind that we opened during Covid.”
Pritchard says Auckland still being in orange, under the Government’s alert system, was a major factor.
“The restrictions that are still in place are still making people cautious, which is at odds with most other cities globally… it does have an impact on people's propensity to go into the city and enjoy themselves.
“If you go to Sydney or Melbourne or further afield right now, you really don't see many masks, you don't see many restrictions. And, you know, a lot of other cities are getting on with it.”
Remote working, and a lot of the council’s public works, which were making it difficult to get around the city, were other factors.
But he was confident that the city was on its way back.
“We've had a glimpse of it in the last few weeks… people are going ‘wow, the city's coming back to life, this is really exciting’.
“We need to find the next 25%, which gets us back to where we were, and in order to do that, we need to sort of unleash people into the city and get them back in here and remind them of how amazing it is.
Because I honestly think Auckland City is one of the best waterfront cities in the world, and I can't wait to see it reach its potential.”
Goodman Property Trust chief executive John Dakin also sees a good news story for Auckland.
His own company, which develops and manages industrial real estate including logistics facilities, warehouses and business parks, was a good example of a business that had confidence in Auckland’s future.
“We've got more development going on in New Zealand than we've ever had before.”
There’s still much to do
But Ngarimu Blair, deputy chairperson of Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei iwi, questions whether Auckland ever found its mojo, even pre-pandemic.
“An inclusive, fair city for all people no matter their income supported by clean harbours, air with native bush and birds drowning out the hum of the city each morning is what our tūpuna and all who have followed have ever wanted. There is much to do. “
To thrive, Auckland needed to harness and support tangata whenua, urban Māori and Pasifika to create, respond and deliver their own solutions to current crises in housing, carbon emissions, bio-diversity and economic exclusion and poverty.
“The Covid pandemic again demonstrated the ability for Māori to mobilise fast to reach the marginalised with limited time and budget. What could we do with time and proper budget building off our traditional representative structures and tikanga? We can accelerate and deepen social and economic inclusion and cultural change. “
There’s new blood, new hope
On Auckland’s waterfront, PR maven Deborah Pead is scoping out new office space.
“My colleagues have found gorgeous offices down the bottom of Queen St… and I'm not so sure about it. But they're younger than me, and they say no [you’re wrong], they’re so confident that the city will come back.
“A few weeks ago, I didn't share that view. But I have been on a few walks around the city lately, and I'm seeing sweeping changes… there are still empty shops, but there are also new buildings being renovated, and I know with hospitality, there are new plans for the places that have gone. So where there have been places falling over, those buildings aren't being abandoned.”
Like others spoken to, Pead sees events as the key to the revitalisation of the city centre.
”Once all the public spaces, shared spaces and cycle lanes are complete there needs to be an engaging programme of events to encourage people to use them. Stage it and they will come.”
But Auckland council needed to come to the party and scrap half the red tape and hefty costs that were strangling efforts to bring people back into the central city.
The council should also entice new businesses into the city with rates rebates, and sweeteners like pre-loaded hop cards for staff to use on public transport, a branded electric bike or scooter for the new tenants, meal vouchers, exhibition vouchers and a council buddy to ease the way back into the city.
An Auckland ambassador, more police on the beat, and ridding the city of its roadworks and orange cones would also put the city back on its feet.
But ultimately, says Pead, Auckland would survive, because it was too big to fail.
“There's new blood, new hope. There's too many people in Auckland for all of this to just disappear.”