ROBERT MACFARLANE has been living in the central city for 12 years. What he didn’t expect was his mother, TRISH MARRYATT, to follow from Christchurch, where she’d lived all her life. Now they live across Queen Street from one another.
JEREMY HANSEN Trish, you were living in a Christchurch townhouse before this. What made you move to Auckland and to Queen Street?
TRISH MARRYATT I came up from Christchurch after the earthquakes. I’d lived there all my life, but both my sons live in Auckland, and my grandchildren. The family nagged me until I came up. I’ve been in Auckland for 12 years now. At first I went to live in Grafton while I got the lie of the land, but I decided after 18 months that I was sick of renting. Because Rob lived in the central city and I was working with him, I decided to look for an apartment down here as well. I’ve been here in Queen Street for 10 years in October.
ROBERT MACFARLANE I came back to New Zealand after a while overseas for a second bash at university and came to Auckland because I wanted to go to architecture school. I’ve been back 18 years now and I’ve lived in the central city that whole time. When I decided to buy something a few years ago, Queen Street was what I could afford.
JEREMY HANSEN The central city and security are two hot topics at the moment. Has your sense of personal security changed?
TRISH MARRYATT Crime has been rising, very much so.
ROBERT MACFARLANE You’ll know all the big stuff that got the news headlines, like the shootings out here in Queen Street in August last year. That was horrific because it happened right outside and a lot of Queen Street residents saw it. Not long afterwards was the shooting down on the rooftop of the building site at the bottom of the street. Things felt really dire at that point. But it still doesn’t really deter us. We’re quite determined about being here, and there is a digging-your-heels-in side to it: we’re not going to leave because of that.
TRISH MARRYATT I also go by the assumption that there are two or three security locks that people would need to get through to reach my door. You’re possibly more secure in an apartment here in the central city than somebody living in a house in the suburbs when you look at it that way. When I lived in Grafton, I was in a standalone townhouse, and at least once a week I had somebody I didn’t know knock on my door. I used to get quite scared. But now I feel safer than I did in Christchurch.
JEREMY HANSEN What else has changed in the time you’ve lived here?
TRISH MARRYATT The street has changed a heck of a lot. We get less traffic down here because of the traffic calming. ROBERT MACFARLANE It used to be chaos out there on Friday and Saturday nights when it was four lanes. TRISH MARRYATT The first night we looked at this place, the agent brought us down about 10 on a Friday night to see what the noise level was like. It turns out that it’s not bad at 10 on a Friday night, but what I didn’t know was that 2 or 3 in the morning was a totally different kettle of fish. Now the street is quieter.
JEREMY HANSEN You’ve both mentioned you’re determined to stay in the central city. What is it that keeps you here?
TRISH MARRYATT It’s good you walk out your front door and you have almost everything at your fingertips. We had a car we bought for the business, but most of our clients are city-based and it would just sit there for 10 days or more without being used. So we’ve joined the carshare schemes instead. I like the fact that I’ve got a supermarket so close. I think there’s one or two shops that are missing in the central city. I’d like a good hardware store. And a butcher. And a vet.
ROBERT MACFARLANE The funny thing is, you’ve got all the luxury stores around here, which are nice to look at, but we are not out every week buying Prada handbags.
TRISH MARRYATT Somebody asked me on the day about all the luxury shops here and how many times I’d been in and I said, “I’ve never been in any of them.” But for a person in my age group, there’s almost everything you need within walking distance. I like to walk every day. I walk up through High Street, Freyberg Place, High Street, up to Albert Park, around Wynyard Quarter and Quay Street – it’s absolutely beautiful down there, especially on a sunny day. And the art gallery is fantastic. There’s so much here, but people who live in the suburbs won’t come into the city because they say they can’t get car parks. If they used their brains they’d realise all they’ve got to do is get on either a bus or a train and come into Britomart.
ROBERT MACFARLANE I think the transportation system is improving, but I still think AT have a scant understanding of the end-user experience.
JEREMY HANSEN Rob, you’re an interior architect and you work from your apartment. Is it an advantage for your business to be located here?
ROBERT MACFARLANE It is. I’ve had commercial projects all over the central city, and when they’re not in the central city, getting to them is easy because it’s not like you’re having to trek all the way across town.
JEREMY HANSEN What’s it like for you two living across Auckland’s main street from each other?
ROBERT MACFARLANE Well, Mum lives on her own so having her so close is peace of mind for me.
TRISH MARRYATT And if something goes wrong with Rob and he wants me in a hurry, I can just run across the street and I’m there. It takes all of three minutes. I think I’ve only ever really once called out for help and that’s when I fell over and I called Rob from hospital.
JEREMY HANSEN How do you both feel about the general trajectory of the central city now?
TRISH MARRYATT What isn’t helping is all the empty shops around. I think a lot of people don’t realise how many people live here. There are 40,000 of us. The central city needs a school. We’ve got kindergartens here, but where do the kids go after that? And there are a lot of empty office buildings around here that could be turned into apartments.
ROBERT MACFARLANE I think its biggest fight is its reputation, and that’s sad really. Because sometimes you’ll hear people really run down the central city and in the next sentence might say, “I haven’t been there for 15 years”. I’m sure to varying degrees the Queen Street gully has always had a bad reputation over the years. We’ve got neighbours who have always lived in this neighbourhood, and they’ve got some fairly hair-raising stories they could tell you from the ‘70s and the ‘80s. But I think the simple concentration of people means there’s always going to be a certain vibe. I still think, though, there is a lot of work to be done. People need to remember that this is also a residential neighbourhood. The council sends street-sweeping machines, leaf blowers, water blasters, this plethora of cleaning equipment down here at 2am, 3am, 4am. But I feel quite excited about things like the redevelopment of the downtown carpark site. The linear park, Te Hā Noa on Victoria Street, is under way and that will be really pretty. I’d love to see the tunnels under Albert Park opened up. And of course the CRL and its new stations will be tremendous when they open. All that other stuff is very exciting.
BUILDING A BETTER CITY
ROBERT AND TRISH’S SUGGESTIONS
1. Remember the central city is also home to more than 40,000 people, so arrange services like street cleaning at an hour that suits them. The central city also needs a school.
2. More residents are welcome: how about converting some of the older office buildings to residences?
3. Visitors from outside the central city need to stop worrying about car parking and just get on public transport.
4. A downtown police station is needed.
