(and rise?) of The fall Greymouth
The once booming coal town of Greymouth is in serious decline, with crumbling derelict buildings and businesses closing down. How can it be resurrected?
Greymouth, on the banks of the Grey River, is the hub of the wild West Coast. Once home to 47 hotels, today it has only six. When you drive into the town, you are greeted by the large, derelict Revington’s Hotel with its crumbling facade on one side and McDonalds on the other.
The latest victim of the West Coast’s economic downturn is Postie Plus. It was the last clothing retail chain left in Greymouth, once home to Farmers and Hallensteins.
An informal survey of locals reveal that even Greymouth residents prefer Hokitika, a bustling tourist town just 50km south of Greymouth. In Greymouth, tourists are wandering around at the weekend looking for a place to eat.
Locals says they are ashamed of how the town looks and suggest it could make more of the beautiful views over the river. They say some businesses are surviving and even a few new ones opening up, but there are big gaps of derelict buildings in between, many of which will not meet earthquake standards.
It is not tapping into the potential tourism market, with visitors driving through by the millions – to stay in Hokitika or the glacier country.
English tourists Gary and Melanie Knight recently arrived in Christchurch for a six-week Kiwi trip of a life time with their 8-yearold son Ralfie. They travelled from Christchurch to Queenstown and then up the West Coast.
‘‘We thought about stopping in Hokitika but decided to travel on and stay two nights in Greymouth to see what it has to offer. Now we’ve seen it, I think we will go back to stay in Hokitika tomorrow night instead,’’ says Melanie.
Gary Knight wonders if ‘‘all the money is being spent on rebuilding Christchurch’’.
‘‘Our first impression of Christchurch was ‘oh my god, what devastation has gone on here’. Our first impression of Greymouth is underwhelming. It kind of has a depressing feel about it. The buildings are run down and it obviously needs some investment.’’
Grey mayor Tony Kokshoornbelieves it all went wrong with the ‘‘perfect storm’’ beginning with the Pike River disaster in 2010 and the collapse of Solid Energy, followed by earthquake strengthening legislation and then the final nail in the coffin, online shopping.
‘‘We realise we have to diversify into different areas of economic development. Right now we only have about 60 direct coal mining jobs. There were thousands when I was growing up. There are over 600 tourism jobs in this district. There has been a huge
change already.’’
‘‘Tourism is growing all the time. How does Greymouth CBD take advantage of that? Up until now it hasn’t. It has a lot of disadvantages from the past,’’ he says.
Greymouth was founded with the gold rush in 1864 but it was coal and timber that sustained it for 150 years. Those industries are now all but gone, he says.
‘‘When I grew up in Greymouth the entire Mawhera Quay had shops and hotels all the way down. They were loaded into the town, there was shops in every crack and cranny. It was a busy vibrant town,’’ he says.
But when the timber yards and the coal mines began closing in the
1960s the Coast went through a
35-year recession.
‘‘I’ve spent my whole life watching the economy go down and down and down. Our biggest export was our kids. People couldn’t get jobs. House prices never went up. Until after 2000 there was a lift in the economy and we were part of it. There was a commodity boom, we had a massive surge, we gained 2000 jobs. It was miraculous,’’ he said.
‘‘Then came the perfect storm when we had the Pike River disaster, and the massive collapse of the coal mining industry. At the same time we had the Christchurch earthquake that brought new regulation in earthquake proofing. We’re next to the Alpine Fault so we know we have to strengthen the buildings. That’s sped up the demolition of the buildings.’’
Due to the downturn in the economy, building owners are having trouble finding tenants and therefore see no point in paying to strengthen their buildings to 34 per cent of new building standards. Many investors don’t want to build on Mawhera lease land, he says.
Mawhera Inc is Greymouth’s biggest landlord and has 1600 shareholders.
Mawhera Inc’s roots date back to 1840 when the Crown bought the entire West Coast for £300. The resident Ma¯ ori Ka¯ i Tahu negotiated more than 4000 ha as native reserve, including central Greymouth.
Kokshoorn explains that as the town boomed, large, expensive Art Deco buildings were erected in the
1920s and1930s by wealthy shopkeepers and hoteliers on the leased land on prime spots along the Grey River. Trouble is, now they are becoming derelict and will need substantial work to meet new building standards.
He admits Greymouth cannot compete against places like Hokitika, but people always compare the two.
‘‘Hokitika is like a big village. They’ve done a great job. It’s vibrant, it gets the buses calling in. We’re lucky that we’ve got the TranzAlpine. There was talk of it going to Hokitika. That would hit us hard but KiwiRail has given us assurance it will never go to Hokitika.’’
‘‘I hear all the time, people saying Greymouth is dead, but it’s not dead. There are things happening. The old concrete buildings will all eventually go. So Greymouth will be smaller.’’
The Grey District Council has been pushing a CBD renewal project and invested almost $2 million in a new town square, which the council is leasing from Mawhera for a peppercorn rental.
‘‘If we want to be an attractive town that lures in tourists – who are driving through here by the millions – we want them to stop in Greymouth, we have to give them a reason to stop. We’re getting an events officer to create events in the new town square that will liven up the town. And hopefully that will become contagious,’’ he says.
Some business owners say their hands are tied by Mawhera lease.
Owner of the Mitsubishi centre, district councillor Allan Gibson did not sign his Mawhera lease when it came up for renewal. When he began the business 28 years ago, his lease was $100 a year, now it’s $18,000.
‘‘They want a personal guarantee for 21 years which I’m not very happy with because I’m 60 years old shortly. You just wouldn’t do it. My counsel told me to refuse to sign it and my accountant says just walk,’’ he says.
He has been unable to secure a loan from a bank to buy his council-owned building because it sits on Mawhera land.
‘‘If you ask the bank for a loan on Mawhera land they’ll say we’ll give you 20 per cent. You’ve got to come up with 80. So how do you plan a future. Long term the future doesn’t look bright. Would you spend money on a building where you didn’t know the future of the bit of land it’s sitting on?
‘‘It’s going to take an awful lot to tidy up those buildings. Half of Greymouth should come down, but no one is going to rebuild on it because it’s Mawhera land and you can’t get the money from the bank. They are our only investor and they’re not investing. Mawhera holds the key.’’
Mawhera Inc chairman James Mason Russell said he was willing to meet with council and business owners to work towards a good outcome for Greymouth.
‘‘We have a development plan in place. I’m not going to give you the details because it’s commercially sensitive. Part of our development strategy is for new buildings. You can’t develop everything at once so our strategy is to do things progressively over years. It’ll be slow progress,’’ he says.
Mawhera’s assets were worth
$123m, up from $2m when it took administration of the land back from the Maori Affairs Department in 1976, he says.
‘‘When the incorporation was set up we said the profits would be put back into the West Coast and that’s what we do. The profit is around $3m a year. It’s ancestral land and we have to look after it. It’s good to get a return off it but that’s not our focus,’’ he says.
He says Mawhera Inc had bought buildings from owners who could not afford to earthquake strengthen them.
‘‘They haven’t done the maintenance in the past. That’s why the buildings have deteriorated. So they’re at a state now because of the earthquake strengthening there will be a considerable cost to fix them.’’
He does not believe that banks refused to lend to building owners on Mawhera land.
‘‘Greymouth has a fault itself. Tourists are complaining that at
5pm everything shuts and there’s nothing to do. Well they are not going to stay around if there’s nothing to do. We’re going to have
5 million tourists by 2020. We need some good entrepreneurs to come and develop,’’ he says.
Greymouth hairdresser and district councillor Tania Gibson says one of the main reasons she ran for council was to see some improvements in the CBD.
‘‘Mawhera need to let us know what the plan is. They need to make a firm commitment to the CBD in the next six months to give our town some hope. Most of the run down buildings are theirs and they need to lead the way.’’
She believes Greymouth is doing ‘‘quite well’’.
‘‘You can live here and get a job and $250,000 gets you a good house. It’s just the central business district. Some businesses are doing well but they are spread out with long, derelict gaps in between.’’
She remembers getting a bus from Cobden to town, working at Farmers for her first job, doing a pub crawl of the hotels in town and queueing to get a taxi back home.
‘‘There’s nothing now. The tourists are walking up and down here all night, there’s nowhere for them to eat. They’re wandering backwards and forwards wondering what to do.
‘‘The restaurants we do have are always booked out. So there’s lots of opportunities, especially in the tourism market,’’ she says.
Her vision for Greymouth is a condensed CBD with a ‘‘more vibey, cafe atmosphere’’.
She wants council to help attract businesses to the town.
‘‘When we started the salon here we didn’t realise what we were in for with the council. It’s so hard to get things going. People have an idea and invest so much in it and they get to the council stage and it’s just so difficult. At every point there was a major road block.’’
‘‘We as a council have to find a way to help and encourage people to start new initiatives. In our latest opinion survey it notes that the red tape and bureaucracy is off putting and frustrating. We need to make it easier for people to work their way through the consents system they have to adhere to.’’
‘‘We need to get our community spirit back and get some vibrancy into the CBD.’’