It’s a “wait and see” for how paid parking will impact the CBD, says Richmond’s business association.
Last week, Tasman District Council agreed to implement paid parking across three central sites.
Affected are only the 165 free all-day car parks in three council-owned off-street car parks – the Harkness-Petrie, Papps, and Warring Carparks.
The change won’t affect any other central Richmond car parks, meaning timed, on-street parking, such as along Queen Street, and the free private parks provided by the Richmond Mall or the Upper Queen Street retail complex were unaffected.
Paid parking has been a long time coming and was consulted on last year, through the council’s annual plan process, which saw 60 per cent of submitters support a user-pays parking system.
Council then agreed to the paid parking in June 2025 while last Tuesday’s decision was to approve the signage changes that would enable paid parking to be implemented.
Raymond Griffith, chair of business association Richmond Unlimited, says feedback from businesses at the time had been mixed.
“As a business, you could get higher turnover of car parks – it’s no different to a restaurant, you want to flip tables, car parking, to a degree, is a similar philosophy,” he said.
“That being said, it’s a lot of the staff that use those car parks.”
It would be a “wait and see” as to what the impact of implementing paid parking would be.
“We’re probably cautious to see where this would go,” Raymond says.
“12 months ago… no one would have known that businesses and retail would continue to suffer and almost get worse.”
Richmond Unlimited would likely support the paid parking if it enabled greater business turnover, but if businesses were worse off as a result, he says the association would look to discuss the issue with the council.
There is currently no proposal from the council to expand paid parking to the other free sites around Richmond, but any suggestions about doing so would worry Raymond.
He highlight’s Nelson City Council’s recent move to trial two free hours of parking over the winter, up from one, as central city retail struggles.
“[Richmond’s] free parking, for up to two or three hours depending on where you are, has been a massive draw card.”
The decision to enable the paid parking sparked alarm for councillor Mark Greening during last week’s Environment, Regulatory, and Operations Committee.
He said the change was not logical, describing the measure as a “revenue-grab”, and sought to abandon the change.
“Nelson is slowly doing a U-turn because it’s killing off its local businesses.”
He failed to get the support required to overturn the proposal.
“What we’re trying to achieve now is more efficient use of this valuable piece of land,” agreed councillor Mike Kininmonth.
Council transportation manager Jamie McPherson described the centrally-located all-day car parks as a “privilege”.
Paid parking was expected to offset the cost of maintaining car parks which was otherwise funded by ratepayers, he said.
“There is no such thing as free parking.”
Previous estimates project the paid parking to generate revenue of $100,000 per annum.
At this stage, paid parking is forecast to be implemented around the end of June, and would have one hour free before costing $1 per hour to a maximum of $4 for all-day parking, and would only apply between 8am and 5pm on weekdays.
