Barbers closed: direct complaints to Mayor Phil Goff

Three hair salons in central Auckland have closed and the owner blames Mayor Phil Goff.

The Barber Shop Company has closed its barber shops on Karangahape Rd, Federal St and Wolfe St.

He has posted signs outside of them directing people to his other stores that are still open and directing complaints to the phone number of Goff’s personal assistant.

Co-founder and CEO Adam Johanson said Goff and the Auckland Council, which owns Auckland Transport (AT), were “deaf” in moving forward with road works and construction projects that are worsening the impact businesses have in the business district. Central (CBD) are already taking from Covid-19.

“We cannot control Covid,” he said.

“We can control the environment and how many roads we dig at the same time. I think AT has dug them all at once.

“We have made the decision to close those stores temporarily until AT completes or stops part of its work and people return to the CBD.”

All staff have been reassigned to the company’s other 15 hair salons in Auckland, including two “fringe” shops that remain open at Viaduct Basin and Anzac Ave, which are close to various residential apartments.

“Our suburban stores and outlying city stores are doing really well, probably better than ever, so we know this is a localized problem directly related to CBD,” Johanson said.

He said this is partly due to many office workers still working from home rather than entering the CBD, while the loss of tourists and foreign students has also affected downtown businesses.

But he said various road works and the City Rail Link project on Albert St were also obstructing pedestrians and cars and discouraging people from entering the city.

“Albert St has been dug up for some time. What has been done is creating new dangers. People don’t hang around,” he said. That has affected its store on Wolfe St, on lower Albert St, and its store on Federal St behind the Auckland District Court.

His K ‘Rd workshop has been impacted by the construction of a new bike path, one of AT’s projects that caused road works on 63 streets this year, which was called a “perfect storm” even before Covid.

Another barber at the corner of K ‘Rd and Queen St, Abbas Motemasek of Cutting Crew, said the corner had been blocked by bike lane construction work for over a year, and his business had dropped by between 20 and one 30 per cent.

“We had four employees, now we are two and a half,” he said. “We are trying to push to pay the rent to keep the landlord happy, that’s all we can do.”

But Susannah Maloney of Maloney’s Barber Shop on Victoria St said she had been “working very hard since the closings to encourage new customers and get back our old customers who have been working from home.”

“We are certainly below what we would normally be at this time of year, but not dramatically, and in no way that threatens our business,” he said.

Heart of the City CEO Viv Beck said last week that both CBD’s pedestrian count and retail billing were still 25% below this time last year.

A Nov. 8 Herald count found 40 stores now closed or for rent at 225 street-facing locations on Queen St between K ‘Rd and the boardwalk, an availability rate of 18 percent.

Last Friday’s one-day CBD shutdown hit the area again and Beck said the pedestrian count so far this week was 30 percent lower than last year.

She has asked Auckland City Council and AT to plan the works for entire areas rather than street by street, and to increase compensation for businesses affected by the City Rail Link work of just over $ 4 million approved last year. to closer to A $ 60 million (NZ $ 64 million) for companies affected by the Sydney light rail project.

Auckland Chamber of Business Executive Director Michael Barnett said he did not support stopping roadworks or the City Rail Link, but called on the council to do more to attract people back to the CBD.

“An important role for the council to play is ensuring that CBD remains a destination despite projects that are improving it in the long term. This role can be anything from promotional to ensuring CBD is on top of his game in ordering people to choose to visit and support him, “he said.

A Goff spokesperson said that stopping the City Rail Link would cost 3,000 jobs, create “enormous difficulties and costs” to restart the project later, and “increase the risk premium for all major New Zealand projects going forward.”

Auckland Transport media relations manager Mark Hannan said the roadworks and City Rail Link were part of a $ 6 billion investment in the infrastructure of the central city of Auckland over the next five years.

“After years of underinvestment, Auckland is now in its largest growth period in the city’s history, so yes, this means there are more roadworks than ever before,” he said.

But he said the downtown construction project was now 75 percent complete and that eight of the 10 sections of K ‘Rd’s “streetscape improvement” had been completed.

Project center

1. Galway St upgrade – opening this month.

2. Lower Albert St Bus Interchange – Opening December 2020.

3. Strengthening of Quay St: from mid-2019 to January 2021.

Queens Wharf to Marsden Wharf (Palisade wall) – complete

Princes Wharf (jet grouting) – complete

Ferry Basin (anchorage on the boardwalk): to be completed by the end of November 2020

Ferry Building (anchorage on the boardwalk): to be completed by the end of January 2021

4. Te Wānanga (new public space facing the sea): – opening in May 2021.

5. Redevelopment of the Ferry Basin: stage 1 from mid-2019 to April 2021.

6. Quay St upgrade: mainly for April 2021. The last section between Princes and Queen Wharf opens in mid-2021.

Additionally, Lower Queen St, which is part of the City Rail Link program, will open at the end of December.

Source: Auckland Transport.