Running for a sandwich
AUCKLAND DIAMOND specialist Mark Beckett plans to stand for Auckland Council as a probusiness candidate in outrage at a sandwich-board crackdown across the city.
Beckett runs his top-end jewellery store on the first floor overlooking Newmarket’s Broadway, a prime boutique shopping street. But after 16 years of having his sandwich board on the pavement to show potential customers where his store is, he’s been told to remove it.
He says he’s been threatened with up to a $20,000 fine if he does not comply with the council bylaw which he says allows sandwich boards to be put in the street only by businesses with groundfloor premises, ironically, the kind of businesses that don’t need them because they have shopfronts.
Not only is Beckett defying the bylaw, he plans to stand for council to change it.
‘‘In these hard times, it is absolutely ridiculous,’’ he said of the sandwich-board crackdown.
For-lease signs have sprung up in shops all over the city, showing just how tough the going is for some retailers.
And yet, Beckett said, it is not just Newmarket that is being targeted.
‘‘It’s right across Auckland,’’ he said.
‘‘I’ve had this signboard out for 16 years,’’ Beckett said. ‘‘I am going to defy them and keep it there.’’
He reckons it is worth $500,000 a year in revenue to his business, and there are nine other first-floor retailers in his block alone who have been hit by the late decision to enforce the bylaw.
Late because after 16 years of the bylaw not being policed in Newmarket, Beckett says the crackdown is happening just as all of Auckland’s bylaws are being revisited. After the merging of the seven city/district authorities, each of which had its own set of bylaws, the council has embarked on a plan to produce one single, harmonised book of bylaws.
There will be a public consultation next year.
A council spokesman denied there was a crackdown, saying that council officers were just going about their normal duties in enforcing the bylaw, which may have been triggered by a complaint from a member of the public.
In some areas, such as the busy Queen St, the boards are banned.