Light at end of tunnel after years of construction for midtown Auckland

Sunday, 24 November 2024

Retailers in Auckland’s CBD share optimism as the City Rail Link progresses toward its 2026 opening. Revitalised streets and reduced traffic are reshaping the city centre.

For five years, midtown Auckland has been awash with cones due to the construction of the City Rail Link.

It will open in 2026, but some of the regeneration work above ground is almost complete.

Retailers in the city centre hope this will encourage more people into the area.

Those who live and work in midtown Auckland might feel like they’ve been doing it tough for the past five years as they’ve dealt with constant construction work for the City Rail Link.

The train loop won’t open until some time in 2026, five years after it was initially scheduled to be operating. But some of the work above ground is nearing completion and for those long-suffering commuters, business owners and residents, there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Stuff went on a tour of midtown Auckland with councillor Richard Hills and head of city centre programmes at Auckland Council, Jenny Larking, to look at what’s changed.

Victoria Street West

Four lanes of road traffic have been reduced to two, with space given to making the area pleasant for pedestrians. Trees have been planted, benches put in and a water fountain installed. There are also two cycle lanes in place, but are yet to open.

“The Te Hā Noa Victoria Street project is part of the city centre masterplan that envisaged an ecological link between Albert Park and Victoria Park,” Larking said.

Seating areas and trees have been installed along Victoria Street.

“We’re delivering 20 new native trees that will be planted along this new section, as well as our understory planting.

“The trees have been selected with our mana whenua partners and it reflects the ecology that was here long before Auckland became a city.”

The trees are planted in tree pits, designed so rainwater irrigates the trees and is filtered before it gets into the stormwater system.

Auckland Council’s investment in this first section of the upgrade of Victoria Street is part of a total budget of $50.5 million which covers the delivery of Te Hā Noa between Elliott Street and Albert Park, with 67.7% of it funded by the city centre targeted rate.

“City centre businesses and residents have stumped up and pushed hard to have this,” Hills said.

“To create a more positive space in the city centre for them, but also they realise the businesses will flourish when there are more exciting spaces and more interesting spaces.

“Tens of thousands of people come from right across Auckland every day into the city centre, but what we want those people to know is that actually the city centre residents and businesses are investing quite a lot more than the average ratepayer into the city centre.”

Elliott Street

This was one of the first projects undertaken during the redevelopment of the city centre.

It’s also lined with trees, has places to lean against when having something to eat and also food vendors have popped up. It’s also a shared space for cars and pedestrians.

While it is nicer, with the food stalls giving it a slight Parisian feel, it still contains an open-air car park on ground that’s been bare since the Royal International Hotel was demolished in 1987.

“We are seeing a lot more people using these corridors, for the fact that there's fewer vehicles down here,” Hills said of Elliott Street.

“The trees have been able to grow and provide more shade in the summer.”

Leading off Elliott Street is the Strand Arcade, which contains boutique shops, including the newly opened coffee brew bar, Slow Koi. Last weekend a street party was put on in Elliott Street to encourage more people to visit it.

“Auckland Council has developed an activation and events programme,” Larking said.

“So we work directly with the businesses and property owners in the area to promote the businesses, invite foot traffic, as well as create new visibility and opportunities for new businesses to open in the area.

“We do that alongside the streetscape project so that the area will be vibrant and inviting.”

A dingy underpass is now an art installation leading from the city centre to Myers Park.

Waimahara

A grim-looking underpass connecting Aotea Square and Myers Park has been revitalised with an installation where if a passerby sings a special waiata the artwork listens and responds with an accompanying display of light and sound.

“It’s a regeneration of a very unloved part of the city before,” Larking said.

“What used to be a car park is now a beautiful space with greenery, new boardwalk, a safer space, as well as an amazing artwork behind that talks to the history of the place.

“It talks to the Waihorotiu Stream that once flowed under the city. It’s also the site of flood protection for the city.

“It’s quite a big bowl that’s intended to provide resilience of the city, so that in heavy rain the area fills up and protects the areas downstream from flood waters. That’s the Queen Street Valley and also Aotea Square.”

Hills says the underpass and improvements to Myers Park ticks several boxes.

“A lot of the works are about investing in spaces so that they are brighter, more interesting and safer,” he said.

“The Myers Park project is about that too. This was often quite a dark space, a space that did feel a little unloved, but it's an important connection to the early childhood centres, the kindergartens, the kids’ playground and the huge number of residents that live around this area.

“This is about bringing people through and up into the city centre as well. So we will see the city become safer because it has better lighting, better seating, more trees and more places to dwell.

Chris Hart, owner of the Real Groovy record store in Auckland, says he can feel the economy picking up.

“The more people you have in a place, as we’ve seen down in other parts of the city we’ve invested in, you have far more vibrancy, a lot more action, busking and things like that.

“You can have events when you start investing in those spaces that aren’t just about road space.”

The reaction

Those impacted by years of construction may not forget for a while what they’ve had to go through, but they can see that they’re over the worst of it.

Owner of the iconic Real Groovy record shop, Chris Hart, moved the store from Queen Street to Victoria Street at the beginning of last year, because he believed the CRL would bring about a huge increase in foot traffic to this part of the city.

He will have to wait at least another year to see that eventuate and says it’s been tough for his business to have so much construction happening outside of it.

“We’ve had occasions where it’s been very difficult to get into the shop itself, let alone getting into town,” Hart said.

“We’re hopeful that most of that is now behind us. The construction work is finished immediately outside our shop, and we're looking forward to an improved future.

“We think that this part of town in the next two years is really going to come into its own and we're looking forward to being part of that.”

Jugdish Naran, co-owner of the Roma Blooms florists on the corner of Albert and Victoria Streets in Auckland says his business still isn’t back to what it was prior to the CRL construction.

Hart says he’s noticed a pick up in business over the last few weeks and feels the economy from his point of view has turned the corner.

“Part of that is the completion of a lot of the works, the change in the weather and the change in the perception of how the economy is going,” Hart said.

“Also, we’ve been lucky in having a lot of international acts come through, Thom Yorke, Travis Scott , Pearl Jam and Coldplay, and that makes a significant difference for us and I think it's launching us into a good Christmas and 2025.”

The future

Although a lot of the regeneration work has been done, there is still more to do. The Lorne Street to Albert Park section of Victoria Street should be open by the end of summer.

The City Rail Link’s streetscape surrounding the station portal in Victoria Street will be finished around mid-2025.

The Victoria Street cycleway from the bottom of College Hill in Freemans Bay to Queen Street will also be ready around the middle of next year and the mid-section of Victoria Street from Queen Street to Lorne Street will open in 2026, once Watercare’s Midtown Wastewater Upgrades are delivered.

So for Jugdish Naran, who owns the Roma Blooms florists with his wife Shobhana Ranchhodji on the corner of Albert and Victoria Street, the wait, and the pain continues.

“For the streets, it is looking a lot better than it was because we’ve had six years of closure,” Naran said.

“But for [foot] traffic, we still haven’t got the population that we used to have, prior to the construction. We had thousands of people walking up and down, now we’ve got hundreds. That’s a big difference for businesses around here.”

Although some work has been done outside the florists, Albert Street still isn’t back to normal and part of Victoria Street by the shop is closed for the construction of the train station. Naran said it’s been a struggle to keep the business going.

“It’s been crazy tough, it’s been mentally stressful for both my wife and myself,” he said.

“We don’t know where our next dollar is going to go, or how we’re going to pay for things, and at the present time we are at the mercy of the landlord. It is just tough. We’re beside ourselves and we’ve got to the stage where you just don’t know what to do anymore.”