The pulling power of a river city

Saturday, 13 April 2024

Depending which entrance you take, there’s a good chance Andrei Reviakin will be the first person you see at Hamilton’s shiny new, uber-chic, big-city-style Made Market.

How cosmopolitan is this, a Muscovite bringing chocolate-covered pastries including croissants and croons to Hamilton along with an enticing array of beautifully packaged chocolate bars.

The croons, cromboloni, whichever you call them, are round croissants, and Reviakin thinks Fruney is the only producer of them in Hamilton.

So far, so decadent.

This is a very Hamilton kind of cosmopolitanism, however. In this version, a ninth-storey apartment in Moscow has given way to a suburban house, and world-leading museums have been replaced by kid-perfect parks with playgrounds. For that matter, there’s a dearth of the ride-share cars that were common in his home city.

Reviakin and his wife Julia Reviakina crossed the world in 2018, with Reviakin enrolling in a strategic management course at Waikato University.

The couple, both engineers, had done their homework. Reviakin says New Zealand at that time had the clearest immigration policy, and as part of the process he needed to enrol in education. “One of the best business schools was at Waikato University. That’s why we chose Hamilton.”

Since then, they have started a business and had three children. They’ve also seen the city change, with lots of new businesses opening. “So we like how it develops.”

That development comes on the back of rapid growth, with Hamilton recently overtaking Tauranga as New Zealand’s fastest-growing city.

Stats NZ data shows, in the year to June 30, 2023, Hamilton grew 3.4% while Tauranga grew 2.5%.

More and more people are arriving in the city, drawn by education and work.

Even so, Hamilton, population 185,300, is tiny in relation to Reviakin’s native Moscow, population more than 12 million.

How does it compare? The weather is definitely better, especially when you have three children to raise, he says. There are no traffic jams, it’s easier to get places.

What else? Reviakin poses the question himself, taps the counter, pauses, laughs.

It’s hard to compare Hamilton with any large city, he says. He misses the cultural aspects, but the family have playgrounds conveniently within walking distance of home, and he goes cycling with his kids.

When they have a day off at the weekend they might head to Auckland, to the cafes and museums and sometimes to Devonport. “The kids, they like the ferries.” The near-deserted Raglan beach is also good for the family during a rare weekday visit.

What’s his favourite place back in Hamilton?

Bootleg Brewery is up there, mainly because it’s a good cycle ride, 17.5k each way, from his home. When he had more flexibility a few months ago he would pedal out on a Thursday and have a beer.

Bootleg is in Matangi, which strictly speaking isn’t Hamilton, but near enough.

“What else?” He poses the question himself, wondering about another favourite. “Um.” He pauses, the silence grows longer. He laughs.

It’s okay, he was only asked for one.

For Todd Charteris, it has to be the riverbank. The Rabobank chief executive, whose broad-shouldered accent comes straight from the Otago sheep and beef farm of his upbringing, walks along the riverbank with mates if he’s in town on a Saturday morning. It’s a brisk 50 minutes across Anzac Bridge and back via Cobham Bridge, finishing up with coffee in Hamilton East.

“I think that river corridor we have is fantastic,” he says. “When I'm in Hamilton, there's not many days where I don't go for a walk, and often it's around the river.”

Hamilton’s been good for him and his wife, along with their three children, now 16, 18 and 20. They moved from Wellington three years ago when specialist food and agri bank Rabobank shifted its headquarters from the capital to Union Square, making it part of Hamilton’s growth story.

Here’s Charteris’s pitch, straight off the bat, one that would warm the cockles of any mayor’s heart. “Moving to the Waikato was really ideal strategically. It's the heart of New Zealand's dairy sector, it's close to the major hort’ region of the Bay of Plenty. And we have a number of New Zealand's largest processors and exporters here in Hamilton or close by.”

He says the businesses they dealt with during the shift to the newly built Union Square on Anglesea St were “fantastic” with their willingness to get things done.

“I think that's the attitude of the city, it feels like to me. Get on and get into it.”

Charteris, who is speaking to the Waikato Times on the phone from Sydney, is frequently out of town on business, but when he is around, he’s keen to support their children’s sport, and they also have a place in Taupō, where he perhaps does less fly fishing than he would like.

“Being in Hamilton, we're just so accessible to a lot of things, which is good.”

Momentarily, Charteris can’t recall the name of the cafe he and his mates go to, but he’s true to his promise to google it and email it through afterwards.

“Great to chat, we walk to/from 'Coffee since yesterday' on Grey Street,” he writes.

“The walking group includes some old mates from my days at Otago University and as I am from the deep south we have been known to end up at the Speights Ale House for a debrief later in the day. Can recommend that for your readers also!”

Further recommendations come from Hamilton City Council chief executive Lance Vervoort.

Stop-offs on a tour of the city in his hybrid SUV include the lake domain and the zoo cafe, all the while Vervoort talking about the city’s charms.

Those include an international cricket ground, easily accessible rugby stadium, Claudelands events centre - all part of what Vervoort calls “the kit”.

Then there are its tertiary education institutions and the hospital. You are reminded that we really do have one of everything, or at least will once the new theatre is built.

There’s also Hamilton Gardens, the city’s main tourist attraction, though Vervoort says they have been getting record visitor numbers to the zoo since its redesign.

He is a guy for a partnership. The drive takes in the four-court indoor rec centre at Rototuna High, by way of example. It is available to the public as well as the school. The council put in half the money and pays an annual operating grant of $90,000. It’s run by a trust, and operates from 7am till 10pm. “It's about 80% occupancy, so it's pretty good.”

Another partnership is the new accessible playground at Claudelands, funded 50-50 by the council and the Magical Bridge Trust. On a mild autumn morning, the extensive playground looks great, fringed by trees that are turning colour, and it’s getting used by a healthy smattering of mums, dads and kids.

“Especially in times of recession, people want to do things that are free, so council facilities become quite important,” Vervoort says. “Libraries, parks, open space areas, skating rinks, those sorts of things.”

Meanwhile, a more than healthy smattering of people are using Hamilton Lake Domain. There must be a function on because car parks close to the Verandah are full. Joggers run past, parents walk with kids, the dog walkers are out and about. So are the pesky Canada geese honking on the water. Vervoort reckons they’ll empty out after duck shooting season.

He’s big on the domain’s merits, the 4km lake circuit walk, the cafe and function facilities, the trees and spaces, the two playgrounds - it’s world class in his view, even if friends from Auckland don’t know it exists.

Vervoort is an immigrant of sorts himself. He moved down with his family in 2012 from northwest Auckland, as their Kumeu area was bracing for growth, another 2500 houses to go in and no more infrastructure.

Hamilton suits them. That said, they live on a 15 acre block in Whatawhata. “We're an equestrian family. So obviously, moving south into the Waikato was a real boon because my wife and daughters have been riding horses at a reasonably high level for a long time. And I'm quite sporty. I like riding bikes as well. I like going out in my boat fishing. I like walking. But we like restaurants, you know, we wanted good shops.”

On all those fronts, Hamilton made sense, and the newcomers found it had strong communities of interest.

“I call it a fantastic small, big city,” Vervoort says. “It's got everything you need, but it's not too big, so you don't become anonymous.”

You’re not a number, like you are in Auckland. Of those who arrived in Hamilton last year, Vervoort says some were Auckland overflow, people who turned up in the City of Sails and couldn’t find a job or got hammered by the cost of housing.

“They've come to Hamilton and hopefully found better opportunities around those two different things,” he says.

Hamilton has a strong economy, he says, based around agriculture and agritech, along with manufacturing, logistics including the emerging hub at Ruakura, and education. “We've always had job growth, even in times of minor or moderate recession.”

Growth is expensive, though, and its pace presents Hamilton’s biggest challenge. On that front, the drive through the city takes in Peacocke, with its roading infrastructure rapidly taking shape in preparation for thousands of homes.

Further growth challenges have arrived since Covid, thanks to cost escalations and the see-sawing ride of interest rates.

Obviously, change is also coming with a new Government. Public-private partnerships can be a dirty word to some, Vervoort says. “But if you get those right, then there can be a whole lot of efficiencies and savings.”

It doesn’t hurt Vervoort’s case for Hamilton that autumn is colouring the city, trees seemingly everywhere you look. If you’re going to show off Hamilton to visitors, do it now.

For all their beauty and amenity, it’s trees that probably prompt the most complaints to council, Vervoort says. It might be a recency effect, but Vervoort says number one is probably blocked drains from autumn leaves. Pot holes and trip hazards also figure.

Less predictably, so does paspalum. Vervoort calls it the stalk season. People start seeing paspalum stalks in the Christmas run-up and the council’s phones go crazy.

“We just say, ‘just relax and it'll be mowed in a few weeks’ time’. They generally go on holiday, and then come back after the holiday and forget about it.”

The main compliment, meanwhile, is about staff at facilities like the libraries and zoo, and those on the call centre, he says.

Vervoort is an affable soul, and on a mild autumn Tuesday morning Hamilton, easy to get around in, comes across as a highly affable city.

For her part, recent arrival Echo Lee loves Hamilton Lake, which is a short walk from the unit she shares with her welder husband Joontak and their nearly two-year-old daughter Clara. Weather permitting, there’s a daily visit to the destination playground there for Clara and her mum or grandmother, Aixiang Zhang, who stays six months of the year with the family. Weather not permitting, the library or Exscite at the museum take the playground’s place.

In August, Echo’s mum will return to Wuhan in China and her dad will come out to take her place. Their support is crucial, with Echo setting out on her nursing masters at the University of Waikato.

But she’s very aware of the sacrifice they are making. Last weekend, in a supremely Kiwi moment, she bowled up to the prime minister at the Running of the Sheep in Te Kuiti to ask him if there was an update on the five-year parent visa touted by National.

He sympathised with her situation and told her it will take time.

It has been eight years since Lee arrived in New Zealand and a lot has happened during that time. She came in July 2016 to study at the Manukau Institute of Technology. A year later, she decided to switch to a bachelor in construction economics at Unitec. Just before moving out of her dormitory, she opened the door and saw a Korean student on his second day in New Zealand. She thought, “wow, handsome boy”. That handsome boy was Joontak, and they have been married five years.

Once Echo got her degree, she worked as a quantity surveyor with an Auckland garden design firm. But the couple realised their pathway to a skilled worker visa - and therefore to residency - would be helped if they left Auckland, because that would give them another 30 points towards the target of 160. Joontak got a job in Hamilton where the couple shifted in November 2021. By the time Echo gave birth to Clara she had residency.

The C-section birth helped trigger her change of career - she had what she describes as a very good experience in Waikato Hospital, though it came with near disaster. She lost consciousness the day after the birth, probably because of blood loss.

“When I woke up, my husband was yelling my name, and I was surrounded by at least 10, like, doctors, nurses, healthcare professionals.”

Lee remembers there was the chance of a transfer by helicopter to Auckland. But the crisis passed. “I recovered very fast and lost my chance to take helicopter,” she laughs.

“And that experience made me think maybe I want to do some job related to medical care.”

When they got residency, their Auckland friends called them to say, why didn’t they move back?

“We say, no, we really love Hamilton, we don't want to move to anywhere,” Echo says.

“I think this quiet city is very suitable for a young family like us.”

The neighbours in their modest concrete-block row of two-storey flats are great, the lake is nearby, the traffic is vastly better and she bikes to university.

“I really feel like right here is my home,” she says.

“Maybe you are local and you lived here for a long time, so it's just a normal day and like a normal town. But for me, it's like the beginning of a new life. Actually, every day. I'm very cheerful. I'm very happy I'm here.”

Hamilton. New Zealand’s fastest-growing city. Good for just about everything.