You can’t park there, or there … or there

Saturday, 22 June 2024

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When is resident parking not resident parking? When you live in a commercial zone.

Come Monday new parking limits around Newtown and Berhampore come into effect.

Restricting some parking on the streets around the hospital and surrounding areas to just three hours was part of Wellington City Council’s plan to manage high demand and give residents priority.

But some residents seem completely unable to get permits at all - despite living in an apartment building and previously having permits.

Resident at 2 Colombo St, Berhampore, Gabe Phanoulas, said he went to renew his resident parking permit a couple of weeks ago.

“They even rang upstairs somewhere to find out if it was OK to do it,” he said.

He got his new permit, paying $195 for it for a year.

A week later, he got an update saying he would have to reapply for a permit only to discover - because the building is zoned commercial - that he can’t have one.

Phanoulas said $195 was not a bad price, especially when the alternative is something like $65 a week for a private park and the availability was zero.

He said he could understand if they were improving the parking situation but surely residents - already in the area for some time - took priority.

“They were happy to take the money off me and then two weeks later that ticket is worthless,” he said.

Airbnb owner Kerry James - who uses his apartment in the Colombo St building as a business - said he might have to rethink it.

He said he will have to tell people that there was no parking and it might have an impact. He thought he might have to reconsider that business later in the year.

“The council has allowed them to be residents and they should be able to have residents parking.”

James said he had a mate who owned a nearby rental property whose tenants were moving to the Hutt because there was nowhere to park their car. They had one baby and another on the way and needed their car.

Colombo St resident Aaron Watson went to renew his permit which only has a few days left on it.

“I followed the consultation closely and there was no suggestion our residents would have parking permits removed. This only became evident when I went to renew my permit, ironically, after receiving a WCC letter reminding me to - and couldn’t renew.”

He said what was particularly galling was the council website still says there are no changes to parking in commercially zoned areas - in and around the Newtown and Berhampore shopping centres.

“If, like me, you followed the consultation, that was reassuring. But it isn’t true.”

He said his best guess is that there was an error. He hoped it was fixed before residents began getting tickets.

Head of the body corporate at the Colombo St building Greg Foster said the change to the car parking requirements in Newtown was yet another slap in the face of people who were struggling to get onto the housing ladder.

'Houses in Wellington are too expensive, so you scrape together the money to buy an apartment, and then the council, who consented to the residential apartment building in the first place, punishes you by taking away your car parking. I guess people who can barely get on to the housing ladder are easy targets for the council as opposed to people who live in houses that cost 4-5 times the price of the apartment.'

The council’s site says on-street parking will be a mix of spaces with no time limits and P180 spaces that anyone can use for up to three hours.

Residents who choose to apply for resident parking permits (and have a permit approved) will be able to park in P180 spaces for as long as they want to.

Berhampore resident Susan Belt said the area did not have the same problems that Newtown did but there were residents who had to park quite a way from their homes.

“Who is going to buy a property with no off street parking with no parking outside?”

New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO) delegate Hilary Gardner who works at Wellington Regional Hospital said they were expecting the changes to make it more difficult for nursing and medical staff coming and going from the hospital.

There have been ongoing issues for staff for years.

“So many of our staff, and they are predominantly female, are arriving in darkness and working 12 hours shifts, then leaving in darkness as well and it’s unreasonable that they are unable to find carparks and park safely.”

Gardner said some staff have been robbed and assaulted.

Parking issues also had a knock-on effect with patients late for appointments and treatment along with frantic family members who then take out their anxiety on staff.

She said the underground parking onsite was full by 9 or 10 in the morning.

The NZNO made submissions about the parking as well as many of the individual members making alternative solutions - like a park scheme similar to the residents that would allow parks for hospital workers.

Southern / Paekawakawa ward councillor Nureddin Abdurahman said there were member of his community panicking not knowing what they were going to do.

He said he received an email from a council officer saying letters were delivered to all addresses on residential streets in the parking scheme area outlining the decision. However some letters were delivered to some properties that were close to but not included within the Berhampore and Newtown West parking scheme zone when the properties were not eligible for a permit.

In response to questions from The Post council spokesperson Victoria Barton-Chapple said the Newtown local centre and mixed-use zoned areas, including the Luxford/Rintoul St shops, and Constable St shops, are not included in the residents parking scheme area and therefore not eligible to apply for residents permits.

“Through the consultation process and as a response to community feedback the amount of restricted parking in each zone was reduced, meaning 80% of on-street parking in Berhampore and 55% of on-street parking in Newtown West (excluding short stay, loading zones, pickup/drop-off zones etc) remains unrestricted where anyone can park, as long as they like.”

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