Fixing New Brighton
After 30 years of neglect and a delayed response to earthquake damage, NewBrightonmay finally be about to turn a corner.
On the first truly cold day of the year, snow has settled on the peninsula and a freezing southerly tears through the New Brighton pedestrian mall. Who would go out in this?
New Brighton feels as bleak as a polar base. On the same morning, Mayor Lianne Dalziel is on the front of the Press, which reports that she was close to tears at a public meeting, worried that she had failed the east of Christchurch, which had backed her so strongly in 2013. Some of the evidence of failure is in New Brighton.
But no-one really blames Dalziel. Everyone knows that the problems faced by New Brighton are deep and go back decades. The scruffy pedestrian mall in 2015 is a ghost of the destination that attracted happy crowds of Saturday shoppers in the 1970s.
They were easier times for New Brighton. But there has been some updating since. The New Brighton pier that stretches 300 metres into the Pacific Ocean is an impressive structure but it needs between $8 million and $9m in earthquake repairs. The New Brighton Library might still be Christchurch’s most beautiful; on a cold Monday, library users huddle around public computers and gorge on free wi-fi while enjoying one of the finest views in the city.
The library offers stark historical contrasts as you leave. An Anzac display honours ‘‘the New Brighton boys’’, the 62 local lives lost during World War I. Meanwhile a community newspaper from only a week ago reports that the teenage tagger who defaced the New Brighton War Memorial feels remorseful.
It is hard to even get to New Brighton these days. Former mayor Garry Moore has called the red zone ‘‘a judder bar to the east’’. Navigate the magical mystery detours, road closures, potholes and cleared sections. Swerve off Pages Rd and head over to Wainoni Rd before being dumped on the far side of the Avon River onto the low, partially flooded New Brighton Rd.
Even a simple bus ride to town these days offers what one eastern suburbs activist describes as ‘‘a grand tour of Aranui’’.
Park near the sea, among the freedom campers. The beach is still marvellous and unspoiled and the grand pier dominates the view. Then a thin, pale, shirtless camper emerges from a van with a towel and a bottle of shampoo, ready for an outdoor shower in the icy cold.
In the pedestrian mall, even some of the shops that are open appear to be closed. Many are dark and empty. About a fifth of commercial floor space in New Brighton sits vacant, according to a 2012 audit that found ‘‘one of the highest vacancy percentages’’ the researchers had come across in 10 years of retail audits around New Zealand.
People who live locally rarely shop locally. Researchers found that 81 per cent of ‘‘retail dollars’’ leave New Brighton. The technical term is ‘‘retail leakage’’. Take supermarket spending out of the equation and locals spend 88 cents in the dollar outside New Brighton itself.
‘‘In retail leakage terms, this is a torrent rather than a trickle,’’ said the audit, quoted in a Christchurch City Council planning document. Simul taneously, there has been a 23 per cent drop in retail employment in New Brighton since 2000, while retail employment grew elsewhere in Christchurch by 14 per cent. The numbers show that New Brighton retail is on its knees.
Cafes and food outlets dominate what remains, then cheap variety stores. Stills of grainy security footage are taped to the windows of U Save Variety, which sells gifts, heavy metal T-shirts and laminated band posters. The stills have captions: ‘‘We know you break our window!’’ and ‘‘You thief… Give us the laser light back … Caught on camera.’’
But there are no customers this morning. A woman quietly rearranges knick-knacks on shelves. ‘‘Not many people in Brighton,’’ she says.
Other shops are busier. There is a buzz in Paper Plus. Quiksilver and DC are said to be among the busiest outlet stores in Australasia. But mostly the mall strikes you as depressing and dated. Posters pushing a gig at the Pierside Cafe by an Eagles, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Bee Gees tribute act seem apt. This really could be the 1970s.
On a good day, the street art and murals might look defiant. On a grim day, they look tatty. But there are moments of obvious community spirit and pride here. A news photo of grinning rock star Dave Grohl (Nirvana, Foo Fighters) is taped to the window of the Honey Cafe; he famously rode a bike to New Brighton and had his picture taken with the owner. A community store sells I Heart New Brighton bumper stickers and T-shirts and collects for the New Brighton Blanket Bank.
A charitable second-hand bookshop seems to act as another community hub. There are two armchairs near a heater for buyers who need a break from the cold. The cheerful store manager thanks a woman for donating a box of books and thanks another for buying some.
‘‘It’s a good idea to be stocking up,’’ she calls out, ‘‘because the days are pretty ugly.’’
People all across Christchurch have a residual affection for New Brighton, for the idea of it as well as the reality of it. This emerged over recent weeks, when the Christchurch City Council hosted residents and community leaders who made hundreds of submissions on the council’s draft Long Term Plan (LTP), arguing for New Brighton to get a fair deal.
Councillor Raf Manji listened to a submission and told the group he had been there a week earlier.
‘‘I couldn’t believe the state of the place,’’ he said. ‘‘I was stunned.’’
But Manji also spoke of tremendous opportunity, encouraged by a meeting with New Brighton Business and Landowners Association manager Paul Zaanen. He is an articulate spokesman for local business who keeps getting thanked by Dalziel for doing someone no-one in New Brighton seems to have managed before: bringing landowners and business owners together under one umbrella.
There are plans, master plans, long term plans and piles of submissions. You could get buried in paperwork. Which is why Zaanen also did his submission as a very watchable 10-minute YouTube clip.
Last year the council approved $5m to go towards a hot salt water pool complex in New Brighton. While this ‘‘legacy project’’, to use the council jargon, is very welcome, there needs to be more spending, spread over a number of years. The long term plan does not fund the master plan adequately, Zaanen argues.
After all, New Brighton is, to use further council jargon, a ‘‘key activity centre’’ for Christchurch. It is not just another suburb, even in its dilapidated state. Thousands come to Saturday markets and beach events over summer. So basic services, such as footpaths, toilets, seats and rubbish bins, must reflect that. Instead, there has been 30 years of neglect, Zaanen says.
The legacy project cannot be created in isolation. Increase the maintenance budgets, increase aesthetic and amenity values, enhance streetscapes. The boldest idea in Zaanen’s submission is borrowed from Rotorua. A mall killed off main street retail there so Rotorua created an ‘‘eat street’’ concept by making a big feature of food and drink destinations. That could be New Brighton’s point of difference.
Bearded architect Jason Mill, who says he has not shaved since the earthquakes, calls New Brighton ‘‘a place where the city comes to play’’. The only problem, as he told council, is that visitors don’t spend any money while playing.
Mill’s line is that New Brighton itself should be the legacy project. Dalziel liked that one and suggested she might even start using it.
But the redevelopment is not about a gentrifying whitewash, as some of the current flavour should be retained.
‘‘We want B and C grade tenancies,’’ Zaanen says by phone. ‘‘We don’t want to become another beige mall.’’
Zaanen opened a cafe in New Brighton soon after the earthquakes. One day he was complaining about the state of things to former councillor Peter Beck and got the message that he should stop whining and do something pro-active. The New Brighton Business and Landowners Association was the result. During a 30-minute conversation, he stops himself whenever he switches into negative mode and accentuates the positive instead. You sense that New Brighton has heard enough griping.
But sometimes the message has been stronger and tougher. He accused the council of ‘‘asset stripping’’ when it took insurance money from the ruined QE II Leisure Centre and pumped it into the Metro Sports Facility in the central city. He called the treatment of New Brighton ‘‘a moral and social injustice’’. The speech to councillors was described as passionate or scathing, depending where you stood. But it was well received locally.
One of the problems historically is that big things have been done in isolation, he says. The pier, the library, the slow road through the mall.
‘‘You can’t start by imposing buildings on people.’’
Once the changes in public space are sorted out, private investment should follow. Zaanen imagines a New Brighton where 20 per cent of the development comes from council and the remaining 80 per cent is private.
A smart idea in the master plan is to shrink the shabby commercial district from the 11 hectares that made sense during the golden age of Saturday shopping to a more manageable 4 ha. Some parts could be rezoned as residential.
‘‘It’s not just about retail or hospitality,’’ Zaanen says. ‘‘We’ve got to get people living back in the centre of the village.’’
In his submission, John Cook, who has worked as general practitioner in the community for close to 40 years, explained the demographics.
The immediate area supports around 16,000 people or 3.5 per cent of the Christchurch population. According to council, around 1000 people left after the earthquakes.
The practice that employs Cook serves 12,000 registered people, or three-quarters of the local population, with 78,000 face to face contacts every year. So he has a good feel for the area.
Cook talked about geocodes and quintiles. That boils down to the news that 75 per cent of the New Brighton population are at the less well-off end of the spectrum, despite high levels of home ownership.
‘‘Disposable incomes, after essentials, are very tight,’’ Cook told the group.
‘‘We are over-represented in hospitals and outpatients.’’
The practice employs a social worker who is ‘‘very active in supporting people at a very basic level’’.
In the 2013 deprivation index, where 1 is least deprived and 10 is most deprived, New Brighton sits at 7, North Beach at 6 and the more prosperous Southshore at 4.
But Cook and others notice changes at ground level. Young families are moving in, along with ‘‘self-employed younger folks working in areas such as design, architecture and IT’’. You could expect some of them to start setting up shop in the central business area of a reconfigured New Brighton.
The persistence of that kind of hope shone through in many of the submissions, a belief that things could or must improve. As though the community has hit rock bottom in the past couple of years and can only get better from here.
Mark Gibson lives in south Christchurch but he rides his bike to the east every day, where he works as co-ordinating minister in the New Brighton Union Parish, which combines Methodist and Presbyterian congregations.
‘‘I personally find it’s very challenging being involved in ministry in the east,’’ he says. ‘‘But I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.’’
A bike gives you a view of the world that cars or even buses can never offer. And the people are more down to earth out here, loyal to their communities. Even inspirational at times.
Perhaps only Lyttelton has an equivalent sense of parochialism and pride, he thinks.
He understands why Dalziel might feel she has let down the east, but he doesn’t blame her either: ‘‘This is an issue which has been building for a long time, which successive councils and governments are responsible for.’’
In his submission, he called for council to make the east a strategic priority over 10 years. Not just business as usual, but a real commitment.
Four years after the earthquakes, planning has not even been finalised, let alone recovery.
‘‘It’s about a community that feels it’s not getting a fair go,’’ Burwood-Pegasus Community Board chairwoman Andrea Cummings told the council. ‘‘Some issues go back 20 years, some are earthquake related. The existing budgets for the east seem woeful. Most of it is just patching what has been damaged.’’
The view from a bike would tell you that once you hit Pages Rd, the picture worsens. The rebuild or recovery that has started in Christchurch has not yet drifted east. The contrast is striking.
‘‘Christchurch cannot afford to have one side of the city and the centre really well-developed and one side, the east, not welldeveloped and getting further behind,’’ Gibson says.
‘‘It will act as a huge drag on the city as a whole. The recovery will be limited by not addressing really fundamental issues out here.’’ And the public mood? ‘‘The people here are absolutely fed up. I really believe that if New Brighton doesn’t see significant change in the next year or two, there will almost be a rebellion. The feeling’s so strong here.’’
Zaanen makes the same point: ‘‘Some of the frustration that has come out in the past five weeks has been brewing for a long period of time.’’
While talking with Evan Smith of community group Eastern Vision last year, Zaanen picked 2015 as the year that anger in New Brighton starts to boil over.
But interestingly, it has been channelled into social media activism and an education in how to get results out of council.
Hundreds of pro forma submissions to the draft LTP were coordinated: 708 about a North Beach promenade, 535 about recovery in the east and over 1000 names on a petition about the proposed closure of the Rawhiti Golf Club, according to a council spokeswoman.
The mayor noticed and was clearly interested in listening and acting.
Cummings said that while other eastern communities have wilted away, there has been a ‘‘revolution’’ in New Brighton. A Facebook group called the People’s Independent Republic of New Brighton was launched as a joke but became a more serious clearing house and network for local information, alongside the likes of Renew Brighton and the New Brighton Project.
In her submission to the draft LTP, Sylvia Smyth of Renew Brighton talked about Jim Diers in Seattle, who evangelises about devolving political power and resourcing back to local community level. Dalziel is also a fan of that kind of thinking.
Handing power back to the community is well and good, Zaanen agrees, but ‘‘it has to be done carefully’’.
But there are positive thoughts out east, finally? Sure. The Saturday market has been bringing thousands to New Brighton, in what could almost be a bohemian, organic revision of the old Saturday shopping era.
Gibson also co-chairs the Avon-Otakaro Network, which is trying to connect the city to the sea, via the Avon River. It expands on the potential of the area as a green, recreational hub.
New Brighton is central to that plan, he says. ‘‘Even in its dilapidated state, it is a destination.’’
It’s not just about retail or hospitality, we’ve got to get people living back in the centre of the village. Paul Zaanen