Plea to reveal business owners

Hastings City Business Association manager Susan McDade. Photo / Glenn Taylor

The mystery members of the Hastings City Business Association are revealing themselves, but 100 remain in the shadows.

Membership is comprised of businesses and building owners in the city centre.

The council levies rates, which funds the 460-member association, but has not revealed the people behind property-owning trusts, citing the Privacy Act.

"The council has sent a letter out to all of the ratepayers, telling them we would like to communicate with them," association manager Susan McDade said. Forty responses were received but the identity of about 100 building owners remained a mystery.

"All the businesses we know - we can walk in and say hi and get their details that way - but some of them don't even know who their landlord is."

The council would not share its database of owner contacts and a title search was time-consuming and only gave the name of the entity that owned the building.

The association is involved with council in possible zone changes to the Hastings retail precinct, suffering from oversupply.

It was one of several issues discussed at the Moving our City Forward Mayoral CBD Symposium last month, which also discussed seismically-challenged buildings, online shopping, competition from seven-day chain-stores, empty shops and the "dark art" of parking. The association is lobbying council to consider a three-month free parking trial period from October 1.

"We have our AGM coming up so it would be really good to have some of those members there to find out what we are doing over the next year," Ms McDade said.

•The AGM is at Breakers Hastings Function Centre on September 28 at 5pm.