KEY POINTS:
Shopping. It's the lifeblood of Queen St, with up to 44,000 people a day treading a path to more than 600 retailers on the main stretch of shops.
It's not called the Golden Mile for nothing. Retailers pay $4000 a square metre on average for a slice of the $660 million annual turnover, more than double the $1850sq m cost on Broadway in Newmarket.
Faced with the declining status of Queen St and a desire to turn central Auckland into a thriving business, residential and entertainment area rivalling the likes of Sydney and Melbourne, the Auckland City Council set about changing the face of downtown.
And what better way than restoring the allure of Queen St and its once mighty reputation as the top shopping destination in Auckland with a catchment of 82,000 central city workers, 70,000 students and a growing residential population now numbering 22,000. Add 115,000 cruise ship visitors this summer, most of them likely to gravitate to the downtown area.
Research revealed cars dominated Queen St and public transport was unreliable, so the emphasis went on reclaiming the street for pedestrians. This was especially the case in the strip from Wellesley St to Customs St.
With the orange cones gone, the newly minted bluestone and recycled redchip pavers provide wider footpaths and mini plazas. Clusters of fully grown nikau palms and younger exotic liquidambars have been planted to give a greater sense of space.
Pedestrians have three new crossings near Darby, Durham and Fort Sts and the trial of countdown clocks at the big intersection of Victoria and Queen Sts has been a huge success.
The downside of putting pedestrians first is that buses take longer to travel up Queen St - frustratingly longer.
A 30km/h speed restriction is on the cards, but plans for 24-hour bus lanes and reducing other traffic to one lane in each direction look unlikely after strong opposition from building owners.
The shopping experience has been bolstered by upgrades to Quay St, Swanson St and Vulcan Lane - although it took fashionistas and a public outroar to convince city officials not to rip up the lane's historic red chip pavers for a bluestone look.
AMP is spending about $8 million refurbishing the historic Imperial Buildings near the bottom of Queen St to house an expanded Louis Vuitton store and a new store for the Italian label Gucci, which opens today.
In about three months, a luxury watch store is set to open at the end of Queen's Arcade, and Prada, Tiffany and Gap are prowling for concept stores in the same neighbourhood, as is computer giant Apple. Two other international fashion names have signed leases in lower Queen St.
With normality returning to Queen St, retailers are reporting a slow pick-up in business, due partly to the doom and gloom on another street half a world away, Wall St.
Smith & Caughey director Terry Cornelius said the new Queen St was a huge improvement but the whole process had been far too drawn out. To make matters worse, the council closed Queen St at Easter for resealing.
Mr Cornelius said there had been a huge drop in business during construction and the store had noticed customers were slow to return.
"There has been no effort from the council to try to attract customers back to Queen St. We need something to let people know Queen St is alive and well," he said.
In June last year, Mike Aholelei, manager of a Gloria Jean's Coffee shop in Queen St, said customers walked into the shop, heard the diggers and walked out. Mr Aholelei yesterday said he was pleased the work was finished and believed the new Queen St was an improvement.
But like other retailers, his trade, which dropped 40 per cent last year, was still down 20 per cent, and the cost of his lease had risen.
"I can't see us being competitive compared with other shopping complexes without Queen St offering free parking to come into the city and have a few more events," he said.
Zan Stoev, who runs Delissimo Delicatessen in Queens Arcade, is not impressed with what $43.5 million has done: "It looks pretty similar."
Mr Stoev, who told the Herald last June that business was down 20 per cent, was also short of customers.
Heart of the City chief executive Alex Swney said statistics confirmed that retailing nationwide was flatlining. In Auckland, the retail pie was being stretched with the opening of the Albany and Sylvia Park malls.
But in the first quarter of this year, the retail turnover in central Auckland had reduced less than that of other shopping centres.
Mr Swney was frustrated that the council continued to spend millions of dollars on roads to suburban malls, where parking was free, while ignoring parking in central Auckland.
* Tomorrow: From Mayoral Drive to Karangahape Rd and the controversies that have dogged the makeover.
Good health starts at the bottom
Poorly constructed pits resulted in poorly-grown trees, 87 of which were cut down in Queen St.
To give new trees the best chance of survival in an unnatural urban setting, arborists designed pits with enough soil and proper drainage to cultivate trees for up to 50 years.
Most of the 48 nikau palms are planted in threes and share a common pit, while the exotic liquidambars are planted in single pits.
The nikau palms each have 8cu m of soil in pits 1.4m deep and 1.8m wide.
The liquidambars, which will grow to be large trees, have 10cu m of soil in pits 1.8m deep, 3.6m long and 1.8m wide.
The pits are built of reinforced concrete blocks with drainage holes in the bottom. The soil is separated from a layer of scoria by a mesh mat.
Grills at ground level enable irrigation, and the pits contain coils which feed water to the tree roots.
The pits have concrete slabs over them below the level of pavers to support the footpath pavement and grills.
Most utility services have been moved outside the pit walls to allow access without interfering with the trees. Where it has been impractical to keep utility services separate from the pits, they have been encased in concrete so tree root growth does not penetrate and damage them.
If trees need to be removed, they can be extracted without removing large areas of pavement.
Nice trees, shame about the traffic
Former Aucklander Peter Curson, who is Professor of Human Geography at Sydney's Macquarie University and visited Auckland in January, gives his views on Queen St:
Undoubtedly the trees, widened parking bays and footpaths "soften" the area, but it is window dressing, a sop to environmental greenies.
The late Victorian-Edwardian-early 20th century architectural legacy is lost under a barrage of tatty small shops, steel and glass highrise office buildings, and the proliferation of awful unit blocks fringing the downtown area.
But it is more than this. Downtown areas are for people, not buses, cars and trucks. Queen St, High St etc should be pedestrian malls, not major traffic thoroughfares.
It is almost as if Auckland is still living in the past, when the central business district was avoided for the delights of suburban shopping malls, restaurants etc. Sydney and many other cities have attracted people back into the city centre.
Auckland diverts them to Ponsonby, Newmarket and/or suburban shopping malls. High St/Lorne St etc should have been closed to traffic years ago. Queen St should be closed now - or at the very least on Saturdays and Sundays.
And what of my old love, Karangahape Rd? Bypassed and totally ignored. St Kevin's Arcade cries out for attention. A once lovely environment totally neglected. That end of K Rd should be "connected" with the CBD, developed and nurtured.
