OPINIONBusinessJune 10, 2024

Wellington desperately needs the Golden Mile upgrade

Wellington editor

Wellington’s central streets are in dire need of a spruce-up. Efforts to cancel the Golden Mile upgrade would doom the city to another decade of stagnation.

Windbag is The Spinoff’s Wellington issues column, written by Wellington editor Joel MacManus. It’s made possible thanks to the support of The Spinoff Members.

Last week, Tony Randle and six other councillors forced a vote to pause the Golden Mile upgrade for 18 months to complete another extensive traffic study. Let’s be clear here; an 18-month pause would mean cancellation. Which is exactly what Randle and his allies intended. The project survived by the barest of margins, after mayor Tory Whanau negotiated to water down Randle’s notice of motion. Now, council staff will just be required to produce another report, but with no delays to construction.

The Golden Mile is Wellington’s main street (well, technically, it’s four streets. And it’s not a mile, it’s 2.43km). It’s the centre of town, surrounded by offices, retail and hospitality, with the best range of transport connections. It has the the most total visitors and the greatest economic value of any area in the city.

If a city’s main street is a pleasant place to be, people will come into town more often, stay longer, and spend more money. That benefits not only the main street, but all the surrounding areas and the wider city economy. Investments in the main street are some of the highest-impact investments a council can make. Importantly, the main street personifies a city. It’s the place every tourist (and potential future resident) visits. A city with a depleted main street looks like a dying city that no one believes in. A city with a fresh, modern main street looks like a city on the rise.

The streets that make up Wellington’s Golden Mile are in rough shape. Courtenay Place is scummy. Manners Street is dodgy. Lambton Quay is tired and dated. Willis Street is actually doing pretty well, to be fair. Wellington has struggled with a sense of malaise for the last decade. Cancelling this upgrade would guarantee that stagnation continues for decades to come.

Wellington desperately needs the Golden Mile upgrade. The project would widen the footpaths, create new public squares, and add more trees and green space. The road would become priority bus lanes. It would remove most carparks and vehicle access, though there would still be loading zones for deliveries, mobility parking, and access for taxis and Ubers in the evening and nighttime. The upgrade has an estimated cost of $139 million, with Waka Kotahi NZTA and Wellington City Council each funding half.

The council took over the project after Let’s Get Wellington Moving was disbanded and is currently reworking the proposal. Previous designs removed about 100 car parks from the Golden Mile, and around 200 from side-streets. That sounds like a lot, but for context, Lambton Quay averages about 3,000 pedestrians per hour in any given spot, and there are more than 3,000 metered on-street carparks in the Wellington CBD, not including private parking buildings.

An artist’s rendering of the upgraded Golden Mile near Midland Park, Lambton Quay.

At the council meeting on Thursday, Kaffee Eis owner Karl Teifenbacher presented a petition from business owners asking the council to stop the project (he also previously circulated a petition to stop a footpath-widening project on Cuba Street). Barry Wilson, a retired lawyer who founded the group Guardians of the Golden Mile, also urged the council to cancel it. Their argument essentially boiled down to the old adage of “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”. But that doesn’t hold water, because the Golden Mile is broke, and Wellington must fix it.

Before debating any of the specifics of any given project, we need to be clear about the overarching objectives. The long-term goal of any city should be to be vibrant, fun and economically powerful, to provide a lifestyle that attracts and retains residents.

The primary thing that adds value to a main street like the Golden Mile is foot traffic. Not carparks, taxis, buses or bike lanes. Those are all just ways to get there; money doesn’t get spent until people are on foot. The simple truth is foot traffic is higher in places that are nice to be in. Retail spending is higher too. Through good placemaking and urban design, we can take places that aren’t nice and make them somewhere people want to be. In the 1980s, Wellington’s waterfront was an industrial wasteland and a giant carpark. Then, the city put a lot of time and effort into making it nice, and now people love walking around it. Karl Teifenbacher understands this instinctively, even if he doesn’t acknowledge it outwardly; his three Kaffee Eis locations are on the waterfront, Cuba Street and Courtenay Place, all areas with extremely high foot traffic.

The Wellington waterfront when it was a giant carpark (Photo: Wellington City Archives)

In any attempt to make a street a great place to be, there will always be tradeoffs. Streets don’t have an unlimited amount of space. Cars take up a lot of room, and if you choose to prioritise them, it takes away from other things. There is a choice between carparks, footpaths, parklets, alfresco dining, benches, trees, sculptures, or space for buskers. We can’t have it all. It is physically impossible.

A simple truth that many Wellington retailers have struggled to accept is that inner cities don’t work the way they used to. Thirty years ago, people had to pop into town constantly to do admin like going to the bank, the post office, meeting their insurance or real estate agent, and to do most of their shopping. Today, online services, delivery and the rise of suburban shopping have eaten into that market. We could fill Lambton Quay with carparks, but it still wouldn’t make it more convenient than those options.

So what can a city centre offer that the internet and suburban centres can’t compete with? Entertainment and experiences. Theatres, gigs, better restaurants, high-end retail, street performers, conferences, business meetings, and simply the vibe that comes from being in a crowd of people.

People don’t have to go into the city to spend money any more. Increasingly, they don’t even have to go there to work. They go because they want to be there. If the allure of the city centre is strong enough, people will find a way to get there, whether it means taking an Uber, a bus or bike. They’ll even be willing to drive and park further away, or pay for private parking. Even crazier still, they could choose to live there.

Last year, the owners of 103-year-old UFS Pharmacy opted not to renew their lease on Courtenay Place because of the future Golden Mile upgrade. “Once you take the cars out, you take the customers out,” manager Julie Keenan told the NZ Herald. She believed her business was dependent on people driving into Courtenay Place to pick up their prescriptions. Bargain Chemist and Chemist Warehouse are also on the Golden Mile and already have no carparks outside their shops, yet they appear to be thriving. They understand their true customer base is the thousands of people who walk past their doors because they work or live nearby.

Studies show central city retail business owners are surprisingly bad at estimating how their customers get to their stores. In Parkdale, Toronto, a quarter of business owners surveyed estimated over half of customers drove to their store. In reality, it was 4%. In central Berlin, business owners estimated 21% of their customers drove. It was actually 6%. In the Berlin survey, the owners who estimated the highest car use were those who drove to work themselves. A 2020 survey on the Golden Mile found just 14% of people on the street had arrived there by car.

Major cities around the world are embracing more pedestrian-friendly central streets, including Times Square in New York, Oxford Street in London, and George Street in Sydney. Those cities aren’t doing this because they think its woke or green or vaguely nice. They’re doing it because it is better for business and better for the city as a whole. Yet almost every time one of these projects is proposed, we hear the same voices crying: “We need our carparks, this city is different, it won’t work here.”

When Dunedin upgraded George Street, retailer Brent Weatherall was so angry about the change he put up signs banning mayor Aaron Hawkins from his shop. Once the project was finished, he called it “a vast improvement on what was there before”. When Auckland upgraded Queen Street, Heart of the City chief executive Viv Beck was on the front page of the NZ Herald threatening to sue the council. Now that it’s complete, she says “retail demand is outstripping supply”.

It’s understandable that business owners are wary of change. It’s risky, and lots of small business owners don’t like risk. The construction process is always disruptive. In fairness, the engagement teams from Let’s Get Wellington Moving did not do a great job of selling the economic benefits of the Golden Mile to business owners. Their attempts at consultation immediately descended into combat and controversy. But there have also been some bad actors at play. Barry Wilson has spent the past few years scaremongering, running misleading polls, and telling restaurant owners their businesses will be forced to close if they lose a couple of carparks. In his speech to the council last week, he claimed some business owners were on suicide watch because of the possibility of carparks being removed from Courtenay Place.

In her book Street Fight: Handbook for an Urban Revolution, the former New York city transport chief Janette Sadik-Khan outlines the strategy she used to modernise New York’s streets, including the move to pedestrianise Times Square. Her first big theme is data. The council needs to show business owners hard numbers on why pedestrian-friendly spaces are better for sales and foot traffic. Then, you have to move fast, be adaptable, and trust that people will come around once they see the final outcome. “Some people are never going to be convinced. There’s no magic wand you can wave to make those objections go away. But the proof is in the project,” she said.

Janette Sadik-Khan (right) with Wellington mayor Tory Whanau (Photo: Joel MacManus)

When I spoke with Sadik-Khan earlier this year, she described her old job as being the “biggest real estate developer in New York”. It’s a good reminder: streets are real estate. And they are public real estate owned by the council, to manage and develop for the good of the city. The Golden Mile streets aren’t owned by the businesses that rent shopfronts. They are owned by all of us, and they should be designed for the maximum benefit of all of us.

There is a tendency in local government to put business owners on a pedestal, coddle them, and act like their opinions hold more weight that other people because they performed the immense charity of owning a business. But small business owners can be just as stupid, small-minded and pig-headed as the rest of us. In the case of the Golden Mile, Karl Tiefenbacher and the others who are trying to get the upgrade cancelled are simply wrong. Their fears are unfounded, they are stuck in their ways, with no vision for the future or understanding of how modern cities work. The overwhelming consensus among urban design experts is that projects like the Golden Mile upgrade improve foot traffic, retail spending and overall amenity in central city areas.

The Golden Mile will be a better, more vibrant, safer and more enjoyable place once this upgrade happens. It will give Wellington a reason to believe in itself, and help to attract new residents. New shops and restaurants will be eager to get access to a busy, premium area full of people and wallets. If some of the current business owners don’t want to be part of that better future then frankly, they don’t have to be. We shouldn’t hold back our city’s progress for their sake.

‘Hutt Valley, Kāpiti, down to the south coast. Our Wellington coverage is powered by members.’

Joel MacManus
— Wellington editor

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Will 2 become 1? (image: Tina Tiller)

MediaJune 5, 2024

Is the next big media merger NZ on Air marrying the Film Commission?

Duncan Greive

Founder

Will 2 become 1? (image: Tina Tiller)

Combining the Film Commission and NZ On Air is now being openly discussed in Wellington. Duncan Greive assesses the idea – and asks why stop there?

Combine what now?

Only the two hugely powerful agencies that decide what we fund for our screens.

The NZ Film Commission was founded in the late 70s, tasked with a broad range of functions, most notably “to assist in the making, promotion, distribution, and exhibition of films [and] to encourage and promote cohesion within the New Zealand film industry”. It has quite a broad remit, which encompasses everything from developing the industry to marketing it overseas, to funding or part-funding many New Zealand films and administering the big money screen production rebate (or SPR), which exists to encourage people to shoot films here.

NZ On Air was formed a decade later, the apex of the fourth Labour government’s gamifying policy. Ostensibly it was to encourage payment of and administer the broadcasting fee – a $110 per household annual payment that funded the making of TV shows (and soon a little music). The fee was eventually abandoned – but it’s worth remembering that universally paid and adjusted for inflation it would be close to $450m a year, around triple what it is today. Over time NZ On Air too has seen its remit broaden, moving beyond television into streaming, podcasts, industry development and some shows (disclosure: including The Spinoff’s) with YouTube as the platform, while also administering a gaming rebate.

This division made sense at the time. Historically, film and television were different worlds. Film played in cinemas, then was rented from stores or sold on DVD, next hitting on satellite or cable TV before finally having a big bang of a premiere on TV. Television mostly meant advertising funded free-to-air network TV, unless it was fancy enough or weird enough to play on subscription services like Sky. TV was largely considered a mass entertainment device, with a bit of cultural relevance at the edge. Film was an artistic form with a juggernaut of commercial outcomes at its core.

Robyn Malcolm in After the Party (Image: Supplied; additional design Archi Banal)

What’s the case for a merger?

Now, Netflix has become the biggest platform for film and TV, “straight to streaming” has become almost as common a film release strategy as debuting in theatres while studios, and actors and directors increasingly work across both mediums. As the remits of NZ On Air and the Film Commission have broadened, so their work has become somewhat tangled. NZ On Air has funded tele-features – functionally, films made for TV, while the Film Commission’s rebate has it touching TV shows like the commercially funded Celebrity Treasure Island and Brokenwood Mysteries, earlier seasons of which were funded by NZ On Air. Both also co-administered a special Covid-era content fund that produced a TV show with cinematic values in After the Party.

Similarly, each now finds itself making both cultural and economic arguments for its existence. Part of the thinking behind the SPR was that films showcasing our lush scenery would help bring tourists to New Zealand, as well as export dollars in. NZ On Air now loves to talk about how $6m of funding toward a drama can meet with some foreign financing and the SPR to unlock $14m of spending locally. Both have become increasingly conscious about the cultural consequences of what they fund – wanting a more diverse slate of content and content creators, which made them more interventionist, and less audience-focused, in the eyes of some.

That points to an underrated difference between NZ On Air and the Film Commission: how each thinks about audiences. The Film Commission has always had a global mandate – get New Zealand film to intentional audiences, and international films to New Zealand. NZ On Air, by contrast, exists to make stuff in New Zealand for New Zealand audiences.

Importantly, those goals, which once seemed simple and distinct, are now becoming increasingly fused – and complex. All audiences are largely on global platforms. So the best way to get eyes on New Zealand content, whether local or international, might be to have it on Netflix (which barely carries any currently) – or YouTube.

At the same time, funding directly for Netflix or YouTube carries issues. Netflix is wildly popular, but not everyone has it, meaning it can be both highly viewed and inaccessible to many New Zealanders. And an increase in funding for global platforms carries the inevitable consequence of reducing spend on local platforms, decaying local industry and infrastructure.

There is a real urgency here. For decades NZ On Air existed to fund shows that would not be affordable through networks like Three and TVNZ’s own commissioning budgets – largely drama, comedy and documentary. Huge areas like news, soaps and reality TV were unimagined, as they were commissioned even when funded entirely through advertising revenues.

As we have seen with the demise of Newshub, Sunday and more, that thesis doesn’t hold for news. There is also a major question mark over the viability of industry giant Shortland Street, and both TVNZ and Three have largely signalled that popular reality formats like Married at First Sight and Celebrity Treasure Island are unlikely to be viable beyond the current cycle. Some of this comes down to taste – audiences love reality TV, but cultural funders tend to cringe at it. That wasn’t a tension, but is now.

And the case against?

Despite the blurring of lines, there remains a real distinction between film and television. The dominant funding of one remains advertising, while the other is direct audience revenue, whether through subscription or ticket sales. The gap between the impact of the Oscars and Emmys shows how film retains a cultural power that only a small handful of television shows reach – or even aspire to.

Perhaps more politically relevant is that recent history suggests media reform is a messy and fraught process. When RNZ tried to switch Concert to a youth channel, it went badly; when Labour tried to merge TVNZ and RNZ, it went worse. While there is likely broad alignment on the logic, as soon as you get into the weeds the chance of upsetting people increases exponentially.

With characters as powerful as Sir Peter Jackson and Taika Waititi involved, screen production can cause news stories bigger than its budgets. Similarly, there is a deep philosophical objection to the concept of rebates from a group focused on limited government, including the New Zealand Initiative, the Taxpayers’ Union and the Act Party. Some of it is a principled objection to the mission creep of the SPR into domestic and NZ On Air-funded productions, some of it is culture war against a sector increasingly considered antagonistic to conservative (and some old school liberal) values. Either way, it has potential to be a gnarly battle, especially if (as is likely) it ends up costing more than anticipated.

Taika Waititi, and his Oscar for best adapted screenplay for Jojo Rabbit for at the 92nd Annual Academy Awards in 2019 (Photo: Getty Images)

What are the big questions and potential complications?

The big argument: why stop there? Te Māngai Pāho (TMP), primarily a funder of te reo Māori TV and radio programming, also funds screen productions, and has been criticised for being excessively focused on older linear TV audiences, especially given the average age of Māori is just 27. Arts development agency Creative NZ (CNZ) funds music and has funded podcasts – the blurring of lines between movies and TV also exists between other cultural forms too.

This isn’t purely specious. There is a chance to create a giant culture agency with a dual internal and global audience remit, with each supercharging the other. The same networks that market our film locations might also help option our novels and find financing for our TV shows.

Equally though, the knotty discussions that CNZ typically wades into around depictions of colonisation in poetry or whether a school Shakespeare programme needs an EA or not are objectively hard. Deeply involving the agency tasked with revitalising te reo Māori through culture risks agonising discussions with no clear correct answer. There are questions to be asked about the scope and direction of TMP and CNZ in a digital era, but the more agencies and departments are involved, the more likely the project collapses under the weight of its own sprawling scope.

Likewise, there is the vexed issue of how to deal with the most popular form of entertainment for all New Zealanders: the semi-professional parts of UGC, or user-generated content. That describes much of YouTube, and increasingly large parts of Spotify, TikTok and Instagram too. Do you ignore it and risk making almost nothing for many young audiences? Or fund it, perhaps through a rebate, and take on all the risks of these largely ungoverned, perhaps ungovernable, platforms? There’s no way to do this without at least contemplating that. Same goes for a gaming – an industry that dwarfs film and TV combined, yet has only minor state participation by comparison.

What’s to stop it happening?

This government is dealing with a profoundly glum economy, partly inherited, partly created by the Reserve Bank, partly willed into being by its own decisions and narrative. This has driven ad-funded domestic media into a tailspin, with profound flow-on impacts for film and TV production, along with the closely related news media. That is the argument for doing something big and consequential right now. It would also serve to draw a stark contrast with the previous Labour government, which announced a lot and spent a bunch of money, with little left to show for it.

Still, it is a sector within which the faultlines between the coalition partners are particularly clear. The nationalistic impulses of NZ First clash with the market-driven ethos of Act. Both are aligned on a war on perceived wokeness – and it’s undeniable that the content funded by both the Film Commission and NZ On Air in recent years has been drifting much more towards a progressive vision of New Zealand. That’s partly a corrective to years of indifference, but it does mean that the sectors can feel politically hostile to the current government.

Still, the prize is huge – fixing a dilapidated and incoherent set of media regulations and legislation, and aligning a cluster of agencies with a series of ambitious goals that might ultimately create a run of hit films, shows and songs. It would allow parties of the right to take plausible credit for revitalising the creative and commercial engines of culture, and contrast that with the halting progress made by Labour when last in power.

While this piece is speculative, the prospect has moved into open discussion in Wellington. It is certainly high risk, but with an outside shot a high reward – a lot like the average film investment. We’ll soon see whether the still very new media minister Paul Goldsmith, who has both agencies under his purview, is willing to place the bet.

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Duncan Greive
— Founder