Michael Hill Jeweller’s Australian CEO Daniel Bracken’s joined the chorus of Queenstown CBD retailers bemoaning the slow progress of the ‘shovel-ready’ street upgrade project.
Work started on Beach Street in September, 2020 — last week Mountain Scene reported it should be completed by March.
Meanwhile, Rees St, according to Queenstown’s council’s website, should be ‘‘open for Christmas’’.
Bracken visited the resort recently and tells Scene he was ‘‘extremely disappointed’’ to see the level of streetworks underway in the CBD.
At present, the work includes upper Brecon St, from Skyline’s base building to Man St, lower Brecon St and Duke St, along both Beach and Rees Sts, and, in a separate project, along Marine Parade, outside Novotel Queenstown Lakeside, to Queenstown Gardens.
That project started in August and aims to improve public access between the town centre, lakefront and the Gardens and, on completion, will include new turf and drainage, a raised concrete path and new access points, a four-bay public toilet and new street furniture.
Once that’s done, the Marine Pde wastewater pump station will be upgraded.
Bracken: ‘‘Considering retailers and hospitality businesses have suffered so significantly during the pandemic, to now endure this level of additional disruption is quite extraordinary.
‘‘Businesses, tourists and locals are now having to endure a very unpleasant experience in the CBD, right in the heart of the peak season … surely, this could have been better planned from a timing perspective.’’
But former mayor Jim Boult is standing by council’s decision to do the work in one hit, saying staging it would have only dragged out ‘‘the pain’’.
‘‘The first cut is the deepest — get on with it and get it done.’’
Boult points out the work had to be done sooner or later anyway and, overall, in respect of the street upgrades, ‘‘the job is actually ahead of schedule’’.
