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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