The tale of a small town and its unwanted big red shed

Paradoxically, Greytown acquired its charm partly as a result of historical neglect.

This was going to be a column about The Warehouse, but somehow it’s mutated into one about Greytown.

For the benefit of readers who have never been there, Greytown is a picturesque – some would say quaint – Wairarapa town with a population of roughly 2000.

In the past couple of decades it has become highly desirable as a bolt-hole for the elite of Wellington, which is little more than an hour’s drive away. I say ‘‘weekend retreat’’, but some people who bought weekend cottages there liked it so much they moved permanently. Wairarapa is full of affluent refugees from Wellington, but nowhere more so than Greytown.

Dame Fran Wilde has a place there. So does the man who succeeded her as chair of the Wellington Regional Council, former All Black Chris Laidlaw.

They are drawn to Greytown by its relaxed pace, its attractive old buildings and its ‘‘villagey’’ atmosphere, not to mention the convenience of being a relatively short drive from Wellington.

Smart cafes, pricey furniture shops and up-market fashion boutiques line the main street. One entrepreneur even hauled an old wooden railways administration building across the Remutaka Hill from the Hutt Valley in six pieces, reassembled it and gave it a second life as the White Swan Country Hotel.

Paradoxically, Greytown acquired its charm partly as a result of historical neglect. When the Wairarapa railway line was built in the late 19th century, it bypassed Greytown. That meant development stalled there, whereas nearby Featherston and Carterton, both of which were on the railway route, surged ahead.

But it also meant that Greytown’s buildings were preserved pretty much in their original Victorian state, because there was no money to be made by tearing them down and building new ones. As a result, Greytown today is infinitely more visually appealing than its neighbouring towns.

For my taste, Greytown is a bit Midsomer, if you get my drift. I’m not suggesting grotesque murders regularly occur there, as in the TV town, but it’s cute and there’s a certain social homogeneity.

So how did I get onto the subject of Greytown? Ah yes, The Warehouse.

I was going to write a column about the beneficial impact of The Warehouse on low-income New Zealanders. There’s a lot of opposition to so-called ‘‘big box’’ retailers, but I recently stumbled across a Massey University research paper that argued persuasively that The Warehouse had been good for low-income people and particularly for Maori.

It had always been my impression that The Warehouse performed a socially and economically useful function by putting a wide range of products, often of good quality, within reach of people with limited disposable income.

The Massey paper not only confirmed as much, but also revealed that the company had a reputation for being good to its staff. Maori employees reported that they were treated well and given opportunities for advancement.

The Massey paper referred specifically to controversy in the wealthy Northland town of Kerikeri when the company proposed to open a store there.

Most of the predominantly Pakeha residents wanted Kerikeri to remain an ‘‘up-market’’ town.

But local Maori were firmly in favour of The Warehouse because the Kerikeri shops were too pricey and they had to drive all the way to Kaitaia to find stuff they could afford.

And that brings me back to Greytown because when The Warehouse announced last October that it planned to open a temporary summer store in the town, there was a similar reaction. A local retailers’ spokesman protested that the ‘‘red-shed’’ brand didn’t fit the town’s image.

I drove past the temporary Warehouse store in Greytown just the other day.

You have to look hard to see it, notwithstanding the red paint, so perhaps the local retailers were being over-sensitive. In any case, it’s on the outskirts of town, so the local boutiques won’t be contaminated by its presence. But here’s the thing: There didn’t seem to be anybody there. I’d noticed the same thing previously when I’d gone past.

What can we infer from this? Perhaps the people of Greytown are signalling, in a gentle way, that The Warehouse doesn’t really belong there.

Or perhaps it’s the market saying there’s a right place for everything and The Warehouse no more belongs in a town like Greytown than a BMW outlet belongs in Shannon or Takaka.

On the other hand, there may be no conclusions to be drawn at all.

But in the meantime, readers of this column might have learned a little bit more about Greytown, a little bit more about The Warehouse, and maybe even something about human nature too.