No change to Petone parking charges despite businesses’ plea

Wednesday, 4 March 2026

Unichem Petone on Jackson St has decided it won't open on Sundays because of paid parking. Pictured: co-owners Joseph Tso, left, and Tina Chou, right.

Claims from Jackson St businesses that paid parking cost the area nearly $12 million in its first year did little to sway Lower Hutt councillors.

Instead, Hutt City councillors voted to keep the blanket $3 an hour charge but create a standalone Jackson St zone, carved out of the wider Hutt City area , for better data collection.

Figures showed the council issued $320,000 in fines in the area in the first year – in some months, exceeding parking-meter revenue.

However, regardless of the vote at the annual plan and long-term plan subcommittee meeting last week, local pharmacy Unichem Petone announced it would close on Sundays starting later this month, citing paid parking as the reason.

Co-owner and pharmacist Joseph Tso said paid parking was “the last straw” in a difficult time since the Covid-19 pandemic, where staffing and rising wages made it challenging. Foot traffic to the store had “definitely” dropped off since the council installed the meters.

If customers thought it was going to be a hassle they just didn’t come, he said.

During the meeting’s public speaking session, business analyst Nik Zangouropoulos of the Jackson St Programme estimated the first 12 months of paid parking had cost the area $11.6m. His calculation was based on a survey of 102 businesses and an assessment of the impact on three landlords, including himself.

His figures - claimed from October 2024 to September 2025 - showed businesses’ revenue losses totalled $7.83m; 50 job losses amounted to $1.5m and the three landlords forgave a combined $2.3m of rent to save their tenants.

The business association wanted councillors to shift from a blanket $3-an-hour charge to offering the first 30 minutes free, one of the options outlined in the meeting papers.

Zangouropoulos said the ticketing regime had been “killing” businesses. “People are basically getting fined and saying to the vendor, ‘I’m not coming back to the street’,” he said. “I heard that several times.”

Jackson Street Programme board member John Donnelly believed having 30 minutes of free parking and dropping charges to $1.50 an hour would be the best model, saying it would maximise parking space utilisation to 80%. “We believe council revenue would grow to over $1m.”

Councillors backed officials’ recommendation to create a new Jackson St parking zone from July to allow more location‑specific data to be collected, but four opposed keeping the current pricing unchanged.

Answering councillors’ questions, the council’s economy and development director, Jon Kingsbury, said officials did not have exact occupancy figures or space-by-space usage data for Jackson St because they were bundled up with the wider HC2 parking zone that covers the city centre.

“The information we do have is just average length of time,” Kingsbury said. “Anything else is an estimate.”

Jackson Street Programme coordinator Hellen Swales was disappointed.

“We thought that it was very short-sighted, because we would be able to actually not only bring that deficit down, but actually help the council make some money.”

Local Democracy Reporting (LDR) is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air