Harbour Quays 'sucking the soul out of Wellington'You’ve prob­a­bly seen the arti­cles and full-page ads in the Domin­ion Post by a group oppos­ing the Har­bour Quays devel­op­ment, and may have looked at their Vibrant Welling­ton web­site. I’ve writ­ten about Har­bour Quays sev­er­al times before, and while I’ve always been scep­ti­cal of the “office park” con­cept, I must admit I was a lit­tle wary of the oppos­ing cam­paign, since it seems to be dri­ven by a group of prop­er­ty devel­op­ers and com­mer­cial land­lords wor­ried that cheap com­pe­ti­tion might under­cut the soar­ing office rents that they’re cur­rent­ly enjoy­ing. But last Thurs­day’s “open let­ter to the city of Welling­ton” was also signed by retail­ers, restau­ra­teurs and three of Welling­ton’s most promi­nent archi­tects, so clear­ly there’s a broad­er base to the oppo­si­tion.

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