Malls, and Lack Thereof
The NZ Herald reports that a company named RCG, who are "retail experts" have given ratings to the malls of Aotearoa because, "We thought it timely."
So I thought it was timely to take a look at what they thought of the malls of the greater Wellington area. Do any of them equal Auckland's mighty four-star Westfield Albany?
The article is skewed towards Auckland Malls, but it does mention poor North City in Porirua, which is only worth two stars as it is "struggling to achieve good sales". The article also says that Lower Hutt's Queensgate "made a big statement" (What, "I'm a mall in Lower Hutt!!!"?), but doesn't say what the rating is.
But most interestingly, the article notes that the researchers found that "Wellington was bereft of malls", like that's a bad thing.
Perhaps it's because Wellington's inner city street shopping works so well it hasn't created a demand for giant malls lurking out in the suburbs.
We have Cuba Mall, and I reckon that's worth more stars than any dirty ol' suburban mall out there.
Photo courtesy of Solid State.
Amen to that. Cuba Mall gets 8 stars from me for combining shops with public space, something none of the malls in the article have.
Yes, who needs malls when you've got a city? "Bereft of malls" is a bit like "bereft of disfiguring skin conditions".
Tom: Amen to that!
The biggest revelation to me was that malls are apparently different from one another. Effective stunt by a consulting company to get free publicity though.
There are many lovely "malls" in Wellington. There's the lovely Capital on the Quay. There's that lovely one where Country Road is. Er, there's the one with the flower/tree logo is it? on Willis? Lovely. And of course the particularly lovely Courtenay Central.
These places are so bereft, they don't need to be bereft *of* anything.
Aside from Courtenay Central, those are really arcades.
Arcade doesn't quite seem like the right term for those places, but I can't think what would be.
I'd consider an arcade to be a long passage, perpendicular to the road, with shops either side. I'm thinking of places like the Strand and Queens arcades in Auckland and the Royal and Block arcades in Melbourne.
But those examples Victorian. Perhaps a modern arcade is what those Lambton retail spaces are.
It seems to me that successful arcades work because they're a pedestrian route, and the Lambton ones usually function as a route to painlessly get from Lambton Quay up to The Terrace (or vice versa).
They may not be as lavishly decorated as their Victorian ancestors, but they still seem to function as a secondary layer of retail for the Lambton precinct.
Shoddy piece of reserach by RCG. A firm I've never heard of so I suspect this little report was a way of gaining some extra market awareness. The "report" criteria are very loose and seem to overlook many factors that I would argue make for a good retail environment.
http://virtuphill.blogspot.com/2008/07/retail-experts-consulting-gone-mad.html
I'm not surpised the meida just swalled their findings though. Anyone could have produced that for a school project . . .
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