The big box that killed CBD
Is 30 years of Kmart in Hastings really something we should be celebrating?
Would more parking really fix the CBD? Or is fixing parking . . . putting lipstick on a pig? Pucker up — it’s time to smear the lipstick off.
About 30 years ago a big box bully landed in Hastings and slowly began to rip the guts out of the town’s CBD. The local mayor at the time was more than happy to have big player Kmart in town.
In true competitive style, Hastings and Napier had scrapped over who would get it.
Hastings won — it had land and a supportive council for the project, led by an insolvent man named John Boscawen who had lost his money in the 1987 stockmarket crash.
But Boscawen was driven, and had the skills to do land negotiations and tenancy deals that guaranteed he could pay back the $5.5 million a fledgling bank loaned him.
Kmart meant jobs in what was then an economy dogged by high unemployment and crippling interest rates.
It meant money flowing into the community from those jobs.
The development signalled Hastings was going places. And it had beaten Napier.
Never mind the poor local supply opportunities and the fact the profits from the Australian-owned business left the district.
It didn’t matter — this was the future of shopping.
And the beginning of the end for the CBD.
Small ‘mum and dad’ retail outlets that had been part of the fabric of the town for decades died.
Hastings’ CBD is not a hard one to disembowel.
It consists of the main trunk Heretaunga St (so lengthy that it has East and West subtitles) with branches here and there.
It’s an old school CBD, outdated and on the verge of being considered a curiosity.
Town planning back in the day would not have considered the impact big box retail and online shopping would eventually have on the town — back then, the longer the main street, the stronger.
Rural service suppliers and commercial enterprise down one end, shops and the odd cafe in the middle, lawyers over there, and some stuff down the other end to keep the arty farty types happy.
Hastings wasn’t the only town embracing big retail precincts in the 1990s.
At the other end of the North Island, Whanga¯rei district councillors signed off on a development that put multiple big box retailers in one spot, and crippled its CBD overnight.
Rotorua — which has a variation of Hastings’ CBD but stronger branches off the trunk line — located its big box outlets around the edge of the town, and sadly, at one end of town on former railway land. Too close to the CBD.
In a way, Hastings has done a better job than other towns by not clustering all its big box retailers into one location, creating single-destination shopping.
Although convenient, it also creates a soulless, concrete carpark landscape.
Here’s where Hastings CBD has life in its heart — it has character.
The eastern end of Heretaunga St is being transformed into a classy entertainment and dining precinct. The western end — ouch, they gaze toward Te Mata Peak longingly at what’s happening down the other end.
Has the Hastings District Council put all its rejuvenation eggs in one basket?
Local retailers reckon the activity down the eastern end is great, but elsewhere, CBD parking is the issue, not dollars being siphoned off by the likes of Kmart.
They want the council, which has spent millions on the gorgeous Toitoi rebuild, to put some money into parking.
Would more parking really fix the CBD? Or is fixing parking, as one retailer observed earlier this year, putting lipstick on a pig?
Pucker up — it’s time to smear the lipstick off.
Parking seems too simplistic an issue.
Perhaps it’s time for the HDC to draw a line or two in Heretaunga St, define the CBD area that has the potential to continue to attract shoppers, and section off and transform the rest.
No one aspires to the Kiwi quarteracre dream anymore, it’s a nightmare.
But imagine ground level accommodation walking distance from a bustling entertainment area and retail precinct.
And maybe even the occasional trip to Kmart.
Knock down some buildings, create inner city parks, accommodation, cafes, restaurants, bars and vibrancy, with new “roads” for ebikes and mobility scooters.
Thirty years ago, the big box invasion pulled shoppers out of the Hastings CBD.
Who is the John Boscawen of the 2020s with the courage and money to get the HDC onside, and start pulling people out of traditional housing options, and into the CBD?