Timaru Retailers Deserve the Shake Up

Timaru retailers have been given a shake up as property developers Calder Stewart have been given the green light to build a shopping mall on the former A & P showgrounds north of the main central business area in Timaru. The retailers association are complaining that the development will kill the main shopping area of Stafford Street which was once part of State Highway One. There are very few locally owned retail stores left in Stafford Street because most have been replaced with national chain stores.  Overseas owned chain stores are keen take the money out of the district and put very little back. Valuable retail space in the central business area has also been taken with office space such as Real Estate Agents, Solicitors and Accountants etc.

Generation Losers
If the central business area in Timaru becomes a ghost town then it will be because of the negative and apathetic attitude of the few local retailers and property owners left in downtown Timaru. It is true that the first generation builds it, the second generation prospers from it and the third generation loses it. After 6 generations of European settlement Timaru is going through a phase where third generation family businesses are closing down. On the 1st December 2010 I counted 50 empty business premises in the central business area.

Downtown Shopping Mall
The attitude of 3rd generation Timaru people who have never had to work to build it is killing Timaru.  Shoppers today don’t want to walk up and down streets in the rain. They want to park their car undercover and have all the retails shops under one roof. There is space at the South end of Stafford Street to build such a shopping mall with room to build a modern hotel and conference centre to go with it. The old and new Government life buildings have 12 upstairs floors that were originally built for office space and now they have less than half dozen tennants between them.
Both buildings coud be converted into hotel accommodation with  conference facilities, car parking and a shopping mall all part of the one complex. To rebuild the South end of Stafford Street on the very ground where the 1st generation pioneers began building the city would be an exciting development.

Need to Think Big
To get such a complex off the ground would first require a huge change in attitude by the people who own the land. The locals would have to start thinking big and if they could do that then they would automatically stop thinking about all the reasons why it would not work. The  property owners need to get together and start thinking about doing something big for the community and not just for themselves.  If they did that then the whole town would get behind the idea and bring it into reality. Timaru Tourist Promotions Ltd have written twice to all the property owners in the area and so far only one has replied. This confirms the negative apathetic attitude that the town is up against.