Lockdown sees retailer out on street
Landlord seeks $3700 in outstanding rent
Aveteran Auckland businessman is reeling after being locked out of his store after he was unable to pay his rent due to Covid-19. Peter Eccles of collectibles store Eccles Coins & Bank Notes, which has been trading in Auckland city centre for more than 50 years, has been unable to get into his shop since yesterday morning.
He said his landlord – private family-owned property investor CP Group, which owns a number of office blocks in Auckland and hotels across New Zealand – changed the locks to the store without notice.
“We had a call from our burglar alarm company to say the alarm was going off, so I rushed down there to find the landlord has locked us out and changed the lock on the building,” Eccles, 73, told the Herald.
He said the business had been unable to pay its rent over the past two months due to a lack of revenue during the Covid-19 lockdown.
Eccles sought rent relief from CP Group, which has offices in the same building as the shop.
CP Group had reduced the rent by 15 per cent, but he was still not able to make the payments.
“They haven’t offered us any meaningful discount for the two months of the lockdown, which we think is not fair.” The issue now, Eccles said, was he could no longer access the $100,000 worth of stock in the shop.
The landlord let Eccles into the shop to shut off the alarm, but told him that the full rent for the past three months, plus a $1000 bond, needed to be paid in order to regain access.
Eccles is now looking to move the shop to another location.
He said he was surprised the landlord had taken such an extreme stance for outstanding rent arrears of $3700.
Jonathan Pang of CP Group declined to comment on the situation, which he said was a legal matter. Eccles Coins & Bank Notes has been trading out of the Dingwall building on Queen St for three years.
Eccles said he hoped to negotiate to pay one month’s outstanding rent, which would allow him to get access to the stock in the store. “They say unless we pay the full amount they won’t let us back in.
“It seems such a draconian move.”