Wellington businesses mock ‘derisory’ council help

Saturday, 4 May 2024

Some business owners facing months of disruption from Wellington City Council work are finding the help on offer somewhere between derisory and insulting.

“How is management training going to help? We are literally shaking,” said Rhys Kaan at Decaffeinated Dragon on Victoria St, months deep into major library works across the road and as a major demolition of a council building is about to get under way no more than 100m away.

He has been offered council help but would only take it so the council couldn’t claim it did everything it could to help: “I know the optics,” he said.

The council is right now amid a major works programme fixing decades of underinvestment in failing pipes, works on Thorndon Quay that survived the demise of Let’s Get Wellington Moving, strengthening the library and Town Hall, and is about to pull down an administration building between them.

No financial help has been offered by the council but it is, via WellingtonNZ, offering other help – which shop owners say amounts to management training, social media use and putting up signs to remind people they are there.

WellingtonNZ, under the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act, would not say what businesses were getting the help, what help they received, nor the cost.

It said the programme involved researching other cities’ work, visiting more than 100 businesses on Thorndon Quay and Courtenay Place, and giving business advice, marketing, and “management capability training”. Three workshops were also planned.

At the Woolstore on Thorndon Quay Paul Robinson is facing months of construction – and lack of customer parking – as works including new bus and cycle lanes are installed. He said the council’s offer of help was “derisory and insulting”.

Robinson said each section of the work along Thorndon Quay was meant to take 12 weeks but it would really be 36 weeks, because neighbouring works’s traffic management also affected car parking. And that was if the 12-week-per-section timeframe was kept to.

Council spokesperson Richard MacLean said the Woolstore had been told there would be no construction directly outside the business until the end of the project, and that work would be at night only.

Cam Dickey, a co-owner of Thorndon Quay furniture shop BoConcept ‒ which saw foot traffic through the door drop by 50% over the past three months due to road works and the economic downturn ‒ had taken up the offer of help from WellingtonNZ.

He had had several sessions with a business mentor and had been given advice which had led to talks with developers to look at furnishings for them as well as developing online marketing.

At Pipitea Marae, manager Paul Retimanu was told in October that work outside his Thorndon Quay site would be completed by January at the latest. It was still ongoing this week.

MacLean said the council found old tram tracks at Pipitea Marae which meant they had to follow protocols to check whether they had historical value. There was about two weeks of work left outside the marae.

“Not all of Thorndon Quay is expected to require this level of work,” MacLean said. It would be more likely in the five areas of Thorndon Quay where new raised crossings were planned.

Compensation for disruption was not available to businesses, according to MacLean.

“We do extensive engagement with businesses well in advance of work reaching them, and make offers such as free branded signage, fencing options, adjustments to the way we manage traffic and there are other business enablement opportunities via a dedicated business support service at WellingtonNZ.

“We are also developing a newsletter to give businesses much more detailed updates on the construction, which will launch later this month.”