“Probably insulting …” WCC considering $1500 grant to Thorndon Quay businesses

Report from RNZ
The Wellington City Council is considering a micro grant of $1500 to businesses suffering from the impact of major roadworks on Thorndon Quay. But Retail NZ chief executive Carolyn Young said that is not enough.

“$1500 is probably insulting to most businesses, they’re losing more than that every day. Are there some of the plans they’ve got, can they put them on pause or not start them straight away until the economy is in a better space? It’s really thinking about how do we support the whole of the environment,” Young said.

Conor Whitten from Wellington’s Chamber of Commerce agreed, saying the payment needs to extend to other businesses.

“There are lots of road works going on in the city, there’s the Golden Mile redevelopment that’s still to come. It is really important that we get this right before work on the Golden Mile gets underway. Our message to the council is to look very closely at what’s going to make a real difference to businesses and it’s important that businesses have a say,” Whitten said.

Anna Calver from the city council said a recent report found the drop in businesses around Thorndon Quay was not all due to road works.

“Where we’ve done those major roading projects, the decline that businesses are seeing on average is in-line with the decline in the CBD so on average we’re not seeing larger decline than just the general economic downturn,” Calver said.

Former Mayor Andy Foster said the city has experienced tough times before, and he was optimistic it will bounce back.

He recalled a shift of head offices away from Wellington.

“Through the, I’m going to say 70s and 80s, we lost a lot of those but a lot went to Auckland, a lot were taking over by overseas organisations, so they went to Australia wherever it might be. So Wellington had to reinvent its economy and started to do that in the early 90s,” Foster said.