Greg Dorn, who’s been 15 years in town, is frustrated at how hard it is to park without being pinged — ‘‘at the moment, if you want to grab a takeaway, the only safe option is to doublepark’’.
‘‘Most locals I know simply refuse to come into town as it’s too hard,’’ Dorn says.
He’s detailed nine parking gripes including:
• Permanent no-parking signs outside Queenstown Primary and the playcentre — ‘‘no one is going to playcentre or school after 6pm’’;
• Parking along Man St, Isle St and opposite Queenstown Primary being eliminated by ‘‘super-wide’’ pavements — ‘‘what the hell is the point of these apart from taking up parking spaces and wasting money building them?’’
• ‘Scab cabs’ taking over three spaces by Fergburger as there are no CCTV cameras to ping them — Dorn says he’s complained to council to no avail;
• Why shouldn’t the loading zone outside White + Wong’s in Shotover St revert to a normal parking space after 6pm?
• Why not provide free parking where the Queenstown Arts Centre building used to be?
He notes when he parked outside Night ’n Day in Shotover St, just to let his kids out to pick up a takeaway, he was zapped a $65 ticket.
‘‘You really struggle to park, so you either don’t come, or you have to know some secret spots that are gonna get vanished pretty quickly, or you have to risk things.’’
Queenstown Lakes District Council boss Mike Theelen says he’d welcome Greg Dorn sharing his parking suggestions with council.
‘‘If there are ways we can subtly change things to make it more workable, then we’re always open to that.’’
He says loading zones can be used for drop-offs/pick-ups — ‘‘the question becomes, people tend to stay there longer than they’re allowed to’’.
He points out council’s opened a large carpark by Lakeview — ‘‘that seems to get relatively little use but it’s a perfect carpark for employees’’ — while Skyline’s opened one for Ben Lomond users.
Theelen notes they did consider multi-level carparks but they didn’t stack up.
However, ‘‘we’re coming towards the end of quite a significant piece of work on our parking strategy, so that’s going to roll out and see a number of changes’’.
He says they’re ‘‘working actively’’ on plans for a carpark on the Arts Centre site but ‘‘we have to get a consent like everybody else’’, and it has to be engineered correctly.
Meanwhile, in terms of parking issues scaring locals away, Theelen notes ‘‘a lot of what you might call local services have been priced out of the CBD, and what we’re seeing is quite a different mix of retail’’.
