Rudman's city: Downtown's abuzz but the carpark's locked up tight

By BRIAN RUDMAN

Nicki Dalton is not what you'd call a late-night stop-out. Indeed she doesn't go out late very much at all. But with the round-the-world race fleet in town and husband Grant one of the key skippers, a certain amount of socialising was inevitable.

That's how Mrs Dalton ended up, a couple of Sunday nights ago, locked outside the city council downtown carpark with two French guests at 11.30 pm, waiting for a security van to arrive to open up the building.

It was an awful ending to the night out at a Viaduct Harbour restaurant. Sure there were signs at the carpark warning you to be out by 11 o'clock on a Sunday night. But they're the sort of signs you notice only after you've been locked out - particularly when you're not in the habit of being last to leave.

And when she left the race village that night, the restaurants were still buzzing as the threesome made their way across the overhead bridge to the locked carpark.

The French women thought it hilarious that such a facility should close so soon. Back home people would just be starting to go out at that hour, they said.

Luckily, Mrs Dalton had a cellphone to call the after-hours number listed at the entrance.

Luckily she also had a couple of companions to provide support in what is a scary part of town for a lone woman.

"I'd have been really nervous if I'd been there on my own. A few years ago someone was killed in the carpark. And last year a guy was killed further along Quay St. It's certainly not a safe place to be."

Her dinner companions willingly stuck with her for the search for a cash machine to get the $25 opening-up fee. They also waited with her in a near-deserted street for 20 minutes for the security men to turn up.

It was, Mrs Dalton volunteers, "my own silly fault" for not reading the small print on the signs. But she does make the eminently sensible point that with the city council and the restaurants actively encouraging people down to the city's new party destination, and the America's Cup just around the corner, you don't put it high on your list of possibilities that the parking facilities will close before the nightspots they are presumably there to serve.

Judd Cotter, marketing and customer services manager for the city's central, business centre carparks, says, "It's the first lockout I've heard about for a while" and apologises for the inconvenience caused, calling it the exception rather than the norm.

But you do have to wonder why, when the city has poured more than $50 million into Viaduct Harbour alone, the associated carpark closes while people are still socialising in the vicinity.

There was a time when respectable people were supposed to be tucked up in front of television's Sunday Theatre with a cup of cocoa by their sides. But these days, in some parts of town at least, every night is - or is becoming - party night. The city's parking buildings seem to be struggling to keep up with this trend.

For example, it's not so long ago that I was at a Town Hall concert on a Sunday where we were warned that if we didn't hurry to our cars in the Aotea Square carpark straight after the show, we risked being locked out. Things have obviously improved since then.

I don't know what the Aotea hours now are, but downtown the carpark is open to 3.30 the next morning on both Fridays and Saturdays. On Mondays and Tuesdays it's open until half an hour after midnight and on Wednesdays and Thursdays it's 1 am.

On Sunday, though, it's just 11 pm. Which, as Mrs Dalton discovered, can be very early on a mid-summer's eve when you're enjoying yourselves.

She wonders why, with the system fully automated, the carparks can't be left open all night. Judd Cotter says that for security reasons - both people and property - staff have to be on duty. Which is fair enough.

But if we are trying to promote ourselves as the premier city of the Pacific, the place where it all happens, then locking up partying visitors' cars seems a touch counterproductive to the image we want to create.

Mr Cotter says there is flexibility in the hours when needed. When the all-girl crew arrived late one night, the carpark remained open late. So it should have. But there's a similar case for keeping it open while people are enjoying the nearby facilities on Princes Wharf and the Viaduct Harbour.