More than 30 temporary Christchurch car parks face closure in consent crackdown

Tuesday, 20 April 2021

A 2020 city council survey found that nearly 20 hectares of vacant central Christchurch land was used for car parking. (File photo)

More than 30 temporary car parks in central Christchurch are at risk of being shut down by the city council.

In December last year, the Christchurch City Council wrote to the owners of 95 temporary offstreet car parks, warning them t o either cease their operations or apply for a resource consent.

The 95 car parks have until April 30 to comply or the council could issue a $300 fine and an abatement notice to cease the operation.

On Tuesday, the council’s head of regulatory compliance, Tracey Weston, said 31 of the 95 car park owners had not responded to the call for compliance. Fifteen consent applications had been received so far and another five car park owners said they would stop operating their car park.

Christchurch City Council says there is a perception the city lacks parking, but is asking if that is really the case or a myth. (First published August 2020)

* Parking charges in central Christchurch could skyrocket

* Call for action as 20pc of central Christchurch sites remain undeveloped

* Council cracks down on 120 unconsented central Christchurch car parks

Central City Business Association chair Annabel Turley fears fewer car parks will deter shoppers.

The council's crackdown on unconsented car parks has the chair of the Central City Business Association, Annabel Turley, worried. Fewer car parks would give people an excuse not to come into the city, she said.

“We need all the parks we can get. At the moment, it is the way that Cantabrians get around.”

She wanted the council to consider what was best for the city and support car park owners in becoming compliant.

City councillor James Gough says some car parks are dangerous and the city should not be proud of them.

“We need to encourage people to come in.”

City councillor James Gough, who chairs a central city momentum working group, said there was no point having a regulatory framework if it was not enforced.

After the earthquakes there was something of a “cowboy” approach to car parking, he said, but ten years on there needed to be more structure.

Some of the unconsented car parks were unsightly and dangerous, Gough said.

“The state of a number of the car-parking spaces in the central city are really sub-par and nothing that we can be proud of.”

Enforcing the council's rules was a level of quality control that “any sensible person should and would welcome”, Gough said.

The council’s crackdown on the temporary car parks is part of its wider “vacant sites programme”, which aims to spur on development of vacant central city land.

In January 2020 there was nearly 70 hectares of vacant land in central Christchurch.

The council has said it would review the number of temporary offstreet car parks in the city as part of a new parking policy. A council document described some of the sites as “messy”.

Some in the business community were wary of the review, saying removing car parking was not good for the fragile city centre, while some developers behind the city's permanent car-parking buildings supported the review.