New Brighton Revitalisation – revisited.

It’s been repeated so often it has become a cliché - the one about Christchurch being the only city in the world where the rich live by the airport and the slums are along the beach. Every so often there is a newspaper article about the bright new feature of the beach suburbs, but we are still waiting. And the slums are certainly there: turn south at Beresford Street and glance right.

Three years ago after a major public meeting, The New Brighton Revitalisation Committee was formed – a combined effort of CCC and locals.

They started well, produced some very pretty brochures and came up with a plan, though they seem to have forgotten that they promised to report back to the local community on a regular basis.

The essential vision statement for the 'revitalisation' project is here.

As vision statements designed by a committee go, this is not too bad. Note the emphasis on ‘encourage investment… commercial and new residential’. Now think of the progress made on this point, three years on. There’s been a lot of land change hands. But visible construction? None.

All we have got is some physical infrastructure improvements (connecting beach to mall via narrowing of Marine Parade, for example, even if the kerbing is positively Albanian in both design and execution).

Can a Council or a Committee make any realistic progress on ‘encouraging investment’? Of course they can. By getting out of the way of those with a commercial interest, and letting them get on with residential development. All else then follows.

The NB revitalisation plan tries to anticipate e.g. the type of retail outlets a revitalised mall would contain. But these things grow organically, and a biological model is more to the point: businesses always follow the consumer dollar.

The first and most obvious ‘development’ needed is residential beach apartment towers. These would house a stable core of local customers, who together with the wider retail catchment, and those attracted by events and other local activities and amenities, would become customers for an increasing range of local businesses.

Get the people into apartments first, and then stand back and watch the cafes, bookshops, hairdressers, galleries, arthouse cinemas (the old Joyland theatre is currently up for sale…), set up and chase those dollars.

That isn’t to suggest that the community abandon design guidelines and other restrictions or requirements for these new residential constructions. Far from it: we need some new ones, of which more later.

But for heaven’s sake, let the dog see the rabbit first. Stop trying to micro-manage revitalization, and let the private sector do what it does best: provide us with things we want and are prepared to pay for.

What could slow or stop development?

There are three aspects which have the potential to seriously restrict the natural flow of investment needed for the developments which constitute the true revitalization.

One is the Coastal Plan Review.
The second is the City-wide review of possible District Scheme changes.
The third is the fear generated by recent “expert” pronouncements about tsunami.
These come in two flavours: Distant, and Near.

These are all discussed, then tied together by some Civil Defence and planning suggestions that offer a way forward.