“I just have to take it,” is the reaction of a business owner who says the yellow lining of a section of Pascoe St will most likely spell the end of her business.
Work is beginning this week to upgrade a Pascoe St entrance that will provide a second access to Mitre 10 and The Junction and accommodate the increase in the number of vehicles accessing new businesses and shops in the development.
The accessway is currently used by heavy vehicles servicing Mitre 10 but an upgrade is required as part of a historical resource consent that was issued to Catal Developments Limited, the original developers of the site, in 2008.
The Quarantine Rd access was first upgraded as the main public entry/exit to Mitre 10, but the Pascoe St access only required an upgrade once the level of activity at The Junction increased to a certain limit.
The planned new supermarket and other retail businesses have resulted in that limit being met. As part of the upgrade, a right-hand turning lane will be installed on Pascoe St and a roughly 150m section of the road will change from car parks to yellow lines on one side. Yellow lines will also be installed on the other side of the road, resulting in the loss of more carparks.
It’s the removal of the carparks that The Lunch Stop owner Mey Khong says will more than likely mean they need to relocate or close the doors of the food business that she has owned with her husband Mann Ng for more than 20 years.
On Monday, ‘no parking’ cones were placed in front of her business and down the street on both sides.
When the works are complete, in around six weeks, she will be left with just one carpark outside the front door.
“For the business, we need more carparks, but they do this and now we have just one,” says Mann.
Mey says the first she heard of the plan for the road was when a neighbouring business owner told her the carparks were disappearing. A short time later, a representative from the development came in with notice that the works would soon begin.
The development land is owned by GP Investments, a company of which Gibbons Holdings is the sole shareholder.
Mey says there was no engagement, and they had no opportunity to share their views on how the changes would affect them.
When Mey found out about the plans, she went to council to write a submission opposing the changes.
However, the submission she made was to Plan Change 31 – the application to deem supermarkets a ‘controlled activity’ under the Nelson Resource Management Plan (NRMP) as opposed to a non-complying activity.
The recommendation to accept the plan change acknowledged her concerns about the new road layout but said they were not related to Plan Change 31 and ultimately rejected her submission.
Nelson City Council group manager environmental management Mandy Bishop says it is council policy to engage with residents and businesses when possible. She says consultation was carried out in 2006 – 18 years ago.
“Consultation with the public was carried out in 2006 when Private Plan Change 6 was publicly notified. This plan change enabled large format retail on the industrially zoned site, received 23 submissions, and resulted in changes to the NRMP in 2008 (Schedule N).”
A summary of submissions, none of which were made by Mey, shows 19 were in opposition to the Plan Change, seven were in support and the application went to a hearing.
The hearing resulted in three Commissioners recommending council accept the Plan Change as it was. The developer then lodged a resource consent application in 2008 that was not required to be notified as by then NRMP had been updated to include Plan Change 06/01.
This meant that as long as specific matters were addressed by the developer the consent would be granted without further public notification.
“One of those matters was the Pascoe St access upgrade. Despite several variations and time extensions over the years, upgrading the Pascoe St entrance has always been a condition of the consent once the number of businesses at the Junction increased to this level,” Mandy says.
Mey finds the whole thing scary but has resigned herself to the fact there’s nothing she can do about it.
‘It’s very scary, we don’t know where our future’s going to be.
“It’s going to really slow me down, I might have to shut or move, it’s going to affect a lot of my business.”
There will be a 30kmh speed limit in place on Pascoe St while the works are carried out.
