14 shops closed for quake work
FOURTEEN businesses in Christchurch’s Northlands Shopping Centre were forced to shut their doors this week after an engineering report found part of the building did not meet new seismic standards.
Tenants were told they would have to stay closed for at least a year while $9 million of earthquake strengthening was done in the next 15 months.
The affected area is at the southern end of the mall, near the Hoyts cinema complex.
The closure would not affect other parts of the shopping centre or interior access between Hoyts and the remainder of the mall.
A Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (Cera)-initiated report, one of several being carried out on the mall, found the area did not comply with stricter quake-loading standards.
Chris Gudgeon, chief executive of Kiwi Income Properties (KIP), the trust that owns the mall, said the affected area was the oldest part of the centre, but the news was still surprising.
‘‘I suppose everything’s clearer with hindsight. You just have to make decisions in the interests of safety,’’ he said.
‘‘We’ve worked this through with Cera and were going to sort arrangements that enable tenants to get back in and remove stock.’’
Construction work would be comprehensive, Gudgeon said, ‘‘almost to the point of a rebuild’’ in parts of the affected area.
The original mall was built in 1967 and was the highest priority for engineering assessment.
The trust was awaiting reports on the rest of the mall and expected more strengthening work would be required, but further closures were unlikely, Gudgeon said.
Northlands has 126 shops and the closures represent 5 per cent of its lettable area.
KIP estimated it would lose $3m in rent while repairs were done.
Northlands enjoyed a postquake boom in 2011 as one of the few suburban malls to be largely unaffected by the February 22 shake.
Sales jumped almost 25 per cent to $390.5m in the absence of competitors such as The Palms and Eastgate malls.
Despite the surge, Northlands’ value was written down from $238.3m to $207m as part of a wider KIP portfolio revaluation in March last year.
Yesterday’s closures were not expected to cause a further devaluation, Gudgeon said.
‘‘If [the closures] had not occurred we would have seen quite a decent revaluation gain.
‘‘What this has done is reversed that such that we’re kind of back where we started a year ago,’’ he said.
‘‘Once we’ve done the work we’ll restore the value.’’