The pain of reshaping Auckland into tomorrow’s modern city

Sunday, 5 October 2025

The Symphony Centre as it will appear over the roof of the Aotea Centre in Auckland.

“About three years.”

Those three little words draw looks of horror from Ranchhodji and Jugdish Naran, owners of Auckland florist Roma Blooms in Midtown area of Auckland’s central business district.

It was the answer Prime Minister Christopher Luxon got from the Malaysian developer MRCB at a swanky launch event in Auckland last week when he asked how long it would take to build the $650 million mixed apartment and commercial Symphony Centre between the Aotea Square entertainment complex and SkyCity.

Auckland’s Midtown has been a building site since 2016 thanks to the grindingly slow completion of the City Rail Link (CRL), which is now slated to open next year along with SkyCity’s International Convention Centre.

The noisy, dusty development of CRL drove custom away from Midtown, and the stories of financial loss and mental distress led to a special hardship fund being developed to provide some help for suffering business owners, though it was “totally inadequate”, according to former mayoral candidate Liz Beck, who campaigned for the businesses.

And now Roma Blooms, which survived the CRL construction faces another three years of the Symphony Centre construction 500 metres away, and even closer, the possible construction of a 51-storey building on the corner of Elliott and Albert streets.

Business owners discuss the Impact of the City Rail Link construction in Albert Street, downtown Auckland. Business is down along with foot traffic (video first published May, 2017).

The years of construction have all-but killed custom in Midtown, Ranchhodji and Naran say, and many businesses have folded, or left as a result. Foot traffic to their shop is a fraction of what it was before the CRL construction began even though construction is now winding down.

“People are coming into the city from overseas, from out of town, and saying the city is empty, there are empty shops,” Naran said.

“The city hasn’t come back, and a lot of the people who come into the city don’t want to come back into it again,” Ranchhodji said.

“And they are telling friends not to come into the city,” she said.

At the MRCB launch, Luxon and Housing and Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop outlined their belief that the Symphony Centre has the beginnings of an Auckland rebirth, as a modern city that Bishop says many local residents don’t yet understand will happen.

“Aucklanders haven't quite worked it out,” Bishop said.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon (right) and Housing Minister Chris Bishop (left) inspect a model of the Symphony Centre that is to be built in Auckland. Between them is Ravi Krishnan, chief executive of MRCB International.

He painted a picture of a city linked by rail in which massive mixed residential and commercial hubs went up beside transport lines.

The Symphony Centre would be New Zealand's first vertical transit-oriented development, Bishop said.

And, it would be the first of many.

“It's an exciting time for Auckland,” he said.

The CRL was going to bring disparate parts of Auckland closer to the central business district, and closer to the other “suburbs and hamlets” of Auckland, he said.

Artist’s render of the modern exterior entrance way of Te Waihorotiu Station building. The station is nearing completion.

“It is going to drive growth, and this Government's driving agenda is increasing economic growth, and [tackling] the great New Zealand tragedy of lack of productivity,” Bishop said.

“Ultimately, it's productivity that drives wages and living standards, and the evidence is really clear around transit-oriented development. Cities that embrace it have a higher level of productivity, and a higher level of growth.”

These were compact, mixed-use, pedestrian-friendly cities with development clustered around, and integrated with, mass transit, with jobs, housing, services and amenities around public transport stations. It's a relatively new concept for New Zealand, Bishop said.

For Luxon, Auckland was playing catch-up with cities that have been smarter and more development-focused.

“Many of us travel all around the world. We go to big cities and we see transport hubs with commercial, with hotels and residential or retail, all in the complex, and it drives vibrancy,” he said.

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.

“This is set to become a great example of the kind of high-quality, high-density trend.”

Bishop praised the modern look of the Symphony Centre, which is marketing apartments with 125-year leases, and predicted it would feature in postcards of the city in five to 10 years’ time.

It’s the intervening years that worry Naran and Ranchhodji.

They campaigned for a national-level law change so that any major developments that would have a huge impact on local business were required to set aside funding to help them survive construction disruption.

The idea had parallels overseas including a Bordeaux rail project which factored in the cost of compensation for 100% of businesses’ losses.

But the idea didn’t find favour with politicians in New Zealand, either from the left or right, and remains a pipe dream.

Roma Blooms Florist shop owners Shobhana Ranchhodji and Jugdish Naran at their shop on Albert Street in Auckland in 2019. They have moved their shop since then to Victoria Street West.

Cristean Monreal, a director from development consultancy RCP, which is involved in the Symphony Development, sympathises.

He believes some of their pain could have been avoided if the CRL project has been better managed.

“How they've staged the work here; it's been terrible,” Monreal said.

“I think it could have been staged better, and I think that CRL has taken too long.”

“The area has struggled, and it’s struggled because of all the roadworks.

“But like anything, there’s been a bit of pain, and hopefully we’re going to get a lot of gain off the back of it as a city.”

But he hoped the building of the Symphony Centre would not cause a further nightmare for local businesses. It was a contained site, and unlike the CRL construction, it would not lead to the closure of streets.

Business owners had been told they would reap the benefits of CRL and the redevelopment of the street scapes around stations from increased foot traffic from as many as 30,000 people using the rail system at peak times, and an increase in the resident population.

“There’s going to be enough people coming to this area to benefit everybody in the area. They’re opening the area up,” Monreal says.

Bledisloe House and the nearly-completed Te Waihorotiu Station.

But the long-suffering owners of Roma Blooms are dubious about the claims made by people in power. Deadlines to complete the CRL failed to be met time and again. Support was poor. Empathy was lacking.

They fear Midtown is losing its office spaces and major employers for good, to be replaced with apartment-dwellers, many of whom only use their apartments from time to time as city pads.

Many city workers are now “twits”, a term used to describe people who go to the office on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, but work from home on Monday and Friday.

It’s killed Friday night drinks, and that has hurt local businesses, Naran says.

“Friday used to be our best day. Now it’s the worst day of the week.”