What Wellington needs to learn from Auckland's City Rail Link business 'support'

Saturday, 22 July 2023

Roma Blooms, a week after the pavement was due to be finished outside the shop. Disruption for the business from the City Rail Link began in 2016.

Wellington mayor Tory Whanau has signalled a business support package is being prepared for businesses affected by the capital’s soon-to-begin Golden Mile upgrade.

But owners of Auckland businesses blighted by years of noisy, disruptive City Rail Link construction fear for Wellington’s small business owners.

They worry Let’s Get Wellington Moving will repeat design failures in the CRL hardship support fund, which was rushed into existence in 2021 after media coverage of businesses failing as shoppers and diners avoided the noise and grime of the construction zone.

When then-Transport Minister Michael Wood ordered the CRL hardship fund established, he said he expected all large infrastructure projects to have similar funds, but ruled out laws to require them.

The LGWM hardship fund will be the first new project to meet Wood’s expectation, but surviving business owners around the CRL site continue to fight for a fairer deal, and hope their Wellington peers get better support.

Sarah Gardner, LGWM programme director, said the organisation was working to understand what “additional support” could be provided to businesses affected by LGWM, and expected details to be unveiled soon.

Dr Sean Sweeney was queried in June about the hardship fund for businesses affected by the construction of the huge project. Video contains references to Viv Beck, CEO of Heart of the City, who fought for the fund to be established.

Shobhana Ranchhodji and Jugdish Naran, owners of Auckland florist Roma Blooms, fought with Viv Beck, Heart of the City chief executive, and Labour MP Helen White, to get Government to order a CRL hardship fund established.

Ranchhodji and Naran urged the Government to take a lead in ensuring a fairer deal for businesses affected by LGWM than they got.

“It’s been so poorly done,” Ranchhodji said.

Consult with businesses

LGWM saaid it had consulted with “business representative organisations” on the design of its support scheme.

Ed Gibbs, who leads corporate affairs and policy at Business Central, said it had been consulted “at a high level”. “There hasn’t been a serious discussion with businesses around the type of support needed.”

Ranchhodji said the design of a scheme should “start from the community”, not be dictated by the organisation doing the construction. “There’s got to be a collaboration.”

Naran would model it on the tikanga of consultation between government and Māori. He fears LGWM is starting consultation late.

“You’ve got to do it within a year or two of when it starts,” he said.

Learn from overseas

“If they had looked around the world, they would have been better equipped to help us,” Ranchhodji said.

Projects in cities overseas including Bordeaux in France, and Birmingham in the United Kingdom, could provide models for business support schemes during giant construction projects.

Light rail in Sydney caused misery and huge losses to businesses during construction.

Gibbs said other countries, like the United Kingdom, appeared much more cognisant of the impact of lengthy disruptions to businesses.

In New Zealand, supporting businesses appeared to be an afterthought, rather than one of the things that was built into planning and budgeting from day one, he said.

That could prove costly. Small businesses seeking billions in damages over their losses during the construction of Sydney’s light rail won their class action case this week paving the way for millions in compensation.

Hailing the victory, small business owner Sophie Hunt told ABC News: 'The Government shouldn't be allowed to ruin people's lives to such an extent for such a long period.”

Consider fairness

Public mega-projects bring public good, but there’s never been a discussion about what losses business should be expected to shoulder as a result of business disruption.

Businesses were told they would benefit from the enhanced CBD once the City Rail Link work was completed. Some did not survive the construction phase.

Some of the businesses who lost custom as a result of the CRL works closed their doors, including a hairdresser whose shop was so unbearably noisy nobody would have their hair cut there.

Others, like Roma Blooms only break even because their titanic battle for support saw the hardship fund set up to help pay their rent.

But instead of back-dating rent support to cover the whole time their businesses were blighted by construction, they were told there wasn’t enough money to do that.

Heart of the City chief executive Viv Beck fought to get the CRl support fund launched.

“Minister Wood said they couldn’t go any further because they would run out of money. That was the only reason,” Naran said.

But Naran said CRL admitted to Parliament just $4.5 million of the $12m hardship fund was spent.

But neither they, nor Beck, can persuade the Government to change the criteria on the fund to enable back-dated payments to be made.

The hardship fund should never have been about just financial hardship, Ranchhodji said.

Businesses had lost a lot of money, and many now carried large debts, she said.

“It’s cost us a million dollars in turnover. I expected us to be semi-retired by now. This project robbed us of our youth.”

Make it independent

Business owners believe CRL never cared about them, and initially told them if they were unhappy, they should launch individual legal challenges under the Public Works Act

Naran said that was a totally unrealistic prospect for businesses being driven to the wall as custom plummeted.

It was important that a support fund was independent from the organisation doing the construction, that there was an appeals process, and that it reported transparently.

The streets around Auckland's City Rail Link have become a tagger's paradise. First published in August 2021.

‘Avoid, mitigate and remedy’

It’s not all about a support scheme.

Construction needed to be carried out in a careful, planned and considerate manner to minimise the losses business owners had to shoulder, the business owners said.

It's not a nice path to Auckland florist Roma Blooms through the City Rail Link construction works. Video taken on July 20, 2023.

The CRL-affected businesses have a litany of complaints about repeated casual failures to consider them, which could have saved a lot of pain, and money.

They complain of CRL failing to notify them of work, failing to properly signpost their businesses, failing to clean graffiti as crime spiked, failing to ensure they had loading zones, and a myriad of small random failures like parking vehicles across entranceways to shops when they could have been parked elsewhere.

“99% of the time whatever they tell us is incorrect,” said Ranchhodji.

“They told us they would be finished last week,” she said on Thursday as men with ear protection lay pavements immediately outside Roma Bloom’s windows.

A pavement was even laid outside Roma Bloom, but Naran said: “The dug it up again to replace the pipes because they were in the wrong position. They moved them across about a metre.”

Keeping on top of graffiti and crime was essential. With reduced foot traffic, crime soared.

Stuff visited Roma Blooms on Thursday morning as police were securing a building site 500m away, where a fatal shooting had unfolded just an hour before.

Avoid tokenistic gestures

Business owners around the CRL were offered things like access to a mental health support line, and online marketing experts to help them run websites.

Being offered low-level counselling by an organisation they saw as causing their mental health problems was insulting, they said.

“Why are we having mental breakdowns? Because of the construction,” Naran said.