Capital Conversation: Restoring the Golden Mile’s glow
Saturday, 14 September 2024
For Golden Mile icon Gubb's Shoes, business is booming, customers are happy and things are going well.
But they're not on the Golden Mile any more ‒ after seven decades in adjacent Wakefield St they're now in Khandallah and aren't looking back.
“It’s easy parking ‒ stress free, it feels like the old days,” Julie Gubb says.
The Golden Mile ‒ Lambton Quay through to Courtenay Place ‒ used to be the place to be seen. High end shopping at Kirkcaldies with its huge sales, men and women dressed up in the retail centre of the capital.
The foot traffic along the route was the highest between Waring Taylor St and Johnston St, at one point seeing 3358 people per hour at midday.
But times have changed. A year ago The Post looked at how the retail route was faring. Back then there were 46 vacant sites along the Golden Mile and Cuba St.
With retail spending down and the cost of living rising we went back to have another look. It’s safe to say while there might be a couple of bright spots, it’s become worse.
There are now 59 either empty spaces, buildings with construction in them, or just long closed.
Courtenay Place’s empty spots are mostly hospitality, from Hummingbird ( which is renewing its liquor licence and likely to reopen after a four-year hiatus) to Nicolini’s (where a new bar is applying for a liquor licence) to the old Burger King site.
Most recently the Egmont St Deli and Diner on Egmont St is shutting its doors at the end of the month, and Pandoro’s three sites have also closed.
In Lambton Quay, Willis St and Cuba Mall, it’s more retail. The old Kirk’s building, once considered the jewel in the Golden Mile’s crown, has been renovated into separate stores ‒ it still has space available on the ground floor and there are two other floors above it, converted to office spaces.
Initially the whole section ‒ actually 2.4km ‒ was to get an upgrade. After Let’s Get Wellington Moving was dissolved earlier this year, the city council picked up the project.
The project was to limit private vehicle access to the inner-city during the day (with a permit system) and include widened footpaths, cycleways, trees and furniture.
The upgrade ‒ some form of which is desperately needed ‒ has faced numerous challenges but construction on the Cambridge/Kent Terrace intersection as the first step is to begin soon.
Work on the Lambton Quay side is not due to start before 2026. That means more years of construction and disruption.
And while many, including shop owners, are not fond of the plan that will involve taking cars and parking away, it’s long past time the Golden Mile got a decent spruce up.
Changes over the past four years to how Wellington works are having long term impacts.
Covid lockdowns drew everyone away from the city. We discovered just how much could be delivered to our own homes and that we could work from home.
Parking is expensive and there is less and less of it, and the ever increasing cost of living means we don’t spend as much. Stats NZ’s electronic card transactions showed a 4.9% fall in retail spending compared to June 2023.
Wellington suffers from a number of other ongoing issues, in particular from the slashing of public sector jobs with more than 6000 gone, and people are opting to leave the capital.
First Retail Group’s Chris Wilkinson is not pessimistic. He likes the Wellington cityscape.
“On the whole our street scape is good.”
He said Lambton Quay traditionally did not have the bigger stores for big brand retailers to go into, so either they have to put up with smaller sites, have to redo sites to accommodate them or are on the periphery like Briscoes on Taranaki St.
Wilkinson says there are areas that have their own feel ‒ like Cuba St, which has a younger vibe or Willis St, which is currently buzzing.
Some Golden Mile shops are empty because they are not the sort of spaces retailers are looking for.
Wilkinson says what’s needed are things like more green spaces.
“Respite and escape are really important in city centres.”
He says feeling safe in the city is also an issue.
Getting people back into the city is the major challenge and one Retail New Zealand chief executive Carolyn Young agrees with.
“One of the biggest struggles is getting people into the city. We need to encourage people into the city. Events are a good way.”
Businesses are saying it’s like Covid or worse.
“In this environment it's worse and ongoing, and they say it's hard to see the light.”
She is hearing from businesses suffering every week.
Meanwhile she agrees the Golden Mile looks tired.
Young says she knows of business in the inner-city who had tried to negotiate with their landlords with little result so had opted to move out of Wellington to the suburbs
Gubb’s Shoes found the last decade in the inner city difficult with more people shopping online, Covid-19 and declining foot traffic.
Julie Gubb said they took over a lease in 2022 and have been enjoying the more suburban area.
Khandallah has a nice vibe.
“A lot of women work from home, get a coffee and have a look at the shop.”
Crown Commercial real estate agent David Grant, who specialises in hospitality sites, said Wellington was in the downswing of a cycle ‒ but that comes with opportunities.
“It might be the best time to consider grabbing up a space for perhaps a bit less than would normally be the case.”
He said in fact there was a lot of movement on Courtenay Place with more coming.
“There is demand from new tenants coming in and we are talking with a number of operators.
“The Golden Mile is still the most desirable, especially from a foot traffic point of view.”
As at June 30 2023 Wellington had 511 new and existing on-licences and 106 off-licences across the region.
Hospitality New Zealand’s Wellington branch president Manjit Singh said times are tough with members really feeling it.
Issues like paying for parking on the weekends, the cost of basic food like milk and eggs and how the upgrade to the Golden Mile was to be managed were all playing into a challenging time for hospitality.
She said trading was down but the cost of everything else had gone up.
Recent Statistics New Zealand data showed that food prices in New Zealand rose 0.4% in the 12 months to August 2024.
Higher prices for restaurant meals and ready-to-eat food and grocery food drove the annual increase in food prices, with price increases for lunch/brunch, hamburgers, and takeaway coffees. The rise in grocery food prices was due to higher prices for olive oil, chocolate blocks, and butter.
Wellington chamber of commerce chief executive Simon Arcus didn’t think it was about the public sector cuts. Not yet anyway.
“There are contributing factors: We have a business community that is fragile,” he said.
He’s cautious about the Golden Mile development, saying the construction and disruption is going to cause their own issues for retail.
“There are businesses with already tight margins and there an absolute absence of a business strategy from the council. So businesses start dying.”
– Additional reporting Harriet Laughton and Grace Symmans
In this new series, Capital Conversation, The Post is digging even deeper into the issues holding Wellington back, while continuing to champion what’s great.