Caught up with this? There's a big new Nike store on Queen St, one up from Starbucks on the Victoria St corner. When it opened, a few Fridays ago, people queued around the block. Some had been there all night.
Bucking a trend that's dominated central Auckland retailing for several years, the store relocated: from Britomart to Queen St. And it's not just any old Nike store: Queen St offers the company's first high-concept "live store" experience in Australasia.
Quite a vote of confidence for the central city.
And there's more. Nike is the anchor tenant in the historic seven-storey HB building, which is being renovated and earthquake strengthened to "5 Greenstar" standard by local developers Morton Property. Luxury offices above, with a large upmarket "character cafe" to come, facing Lorne St at the back.
What about this? Last Saturday, Queen St was stuffed full of people celebrating Diwali. The town hall was packed for a concert that evening, too. The pedestrian count was 53 per cent up on the previous Saturday and almost back to the Diwali record of 2019.
More stats to conjure with. On a good week, Tuesday through Thursday, the pedestrian count in downtown Auckland now nudges 150,000. It drops off on Fridays and even more on Mondays. But the biggest days - the days when most people are in town - are Saturdays.
In the dark days of the long 2021 lockdown, the number dropped to 15,000. On that Diwali day - and on another Saturday recently - it went close to 200,000.
Pedestrian counts for the September quarter were 14.5 per cent higher than in the previous quarter to June.
These numbers reveal a lot of things. With Saturdays the biggest days, it's no longer accurate to think of downtown Auckland as simply the central business district. It's a lot more than that.
Office worker numbers are declining, and not just because of Covid. But shoppers are returning and the really big numbers happen when there's an event. Billie Eilish's three nights at Spark Arena, like Diwali, were a boom for the entire central city.
Coming soon: the Black Friday shopping bonanza, scheduled for November 25. The Santa Parade is two days later and then you can buckle in for a busy Christmas.
Nike isn't the only recent arrival. Queen St also has a brand-new upmarket furniture store, SC Luxury, which has opened a block down, next to Macpac.
A furniture store on Queen St? What's going on? The answer is: 42,000 residents and counting. There are, by one estimate, 800 new apartments under construction within walking distance of Midtown.
These residents don't all work in the city centre, either. When I met Jenny Larking, Auckland Council's head of city centre programmes, she said living in the central city was becoming attractive to people who work elsewhere.
Many of them, when the city rail link (CRL) opens, will jump on a train for work and return to a home where the bustling nightlife, beautiful parks and waterfront are all within an easy walk.
Larking thinks the CRL could have as big an impact on the way we live as the harbour bridge did when it opened 63 years ago.
Another statistic. On a rainy day, the number of pedestrians in Queen St drops by 30-50 per cent. WFH rules: everyone who can, now works from home at least some of the time. It means that although office workers will always be an important component of inner-city life, they're now just one part of the whole.
Students have returned and last week, according to the reputable Times Higher Education, AUT became the second-ranked university in the country. That means central Auckland now has New Zealand's top two universities, sitting right next to each other, a twin magnet for people and talent and opportunity.
Larking is steely-eyed, an architect by training.
"I've been in my job six years," she said, "and it's been six years of disruption, one way or another."
Quay St, the convention centre, the CRL and Albert St, all the worrying and the roadworks on Queen St.
But Queen St will be finished in November.
When I went to see Steve Armitage, acting CEO of the business association Heart of the City, he told me: "They promise it will be ready for the Santa Parade."
And while the CRL work continues on Mayoral Drive, Albert St and Victoria St, most of the central city will be ready for summer.
The first cruise ship of the season arrives tomorrow and it will be followed by another 103. The Queen Elizabeth and the enormous Ovation of the Seas will both be here just before Christmas.
But oh, the road cones.
THEY'RE EVERYWHERE you look. Auckland has one-third of the country's population but two-thirds of its construction cranes, according to the RLB Crane Index. And, of them, almost half are in the central city. The building boom has been and still is massive.
In the public domain, the seawall and road rebuild at Quay St are finished, along with the new Te Wananga plaza jutting over the water. The scaffolding is off the old Central Post Office, home of the Britomart Railway Station. Te Komititanga, the square in front of it, is fully open, except the corner where Precinct Properties is still renovating the tower block above.
The bottom block of Queen St is done and the entrance to Fort St has a new pocket park. Queen St's eastern footpath is being widened all the way to the Civic. The Civic block itself is becoming a bus transit centre and is closed to private vehicles.
Wellesley St, dog-legging on to Queen, has already become the major bus route through the city. There's a new road configuration outside the town hall.
The structure of the CRL station on Wellesley St is now in place, the tunnelling is complete and they're installing the architectural features and technical services.
The station will be called Te Waihorotiu, which is the name of the stream that still runs, underground, through the Queen St valley.
The private sector is also busy. Above the station, a massive new building to be known as the Symphony Centre will contain offices, apartments, terraces, shops, cafes and restaurants. It has a triangular cutaway shape, to allow sunlight on to Aotea Square.
The Symphony Centre will be to Aotea Square and Te Waihorotiu what Commercial Bay is to Te Komititanga and the rail/bus/ferry downtown transport hub: a major commercial magnet.
It will have the added bonus that it's in the middle of the arts precinct, with concert halls, theatres and galleries all around. The forlorn SkyWorld building is getting in on the act, with a reno that will transform it into the OnQ Entertainment Centre.
Welcome to Midtown, where shopping, hospitality, entertainment, a major public square and public transport will all serve each other.
All of that, plus the offices, apartments and universities, will make Te Waihorotiu the busiest railway station in the country. They're expecting passenger numbers to grow to 54,000 a day.
There's even a rumour that funding has been found to restore the St James theatre, on the other side of Queen St from the Civic.
The top of Federal St is now an elegant shared space, with the City Mission's wonderful new HomeGround building rising above it. The CAB apartment tower, once the council administration building, has opened and work proceeds on the other buildings that will sit nearby.
The bottom of Myers Park is getting a makeover, SkyCity's convention centre continues to take shape and there are so many new hotel buildings it's almost too hard to count them all.
Early next year, work will begin to convert Victoria St into Te Hā Noa: a street lined with trees, almost half the existing road space converted to a kind of linear plaza, with a dedicated bike path and single lane each way for traffic. It'll connect Victoria Park to the west with Albert Park to the east and will have its own very busy entrances to Te Waihorotiu.
And then there's Queen St itself.
FROM CUSTOMS St all the way up to Mayoral Drive, the pavers are being laid fast. "No dig" is what they call it: the pavers are being laid directly on top of the existing roadway.
This is essentially the same linear plaza design that's planned for Victoria St, with a single traffic lane each way. But it's being done inside a year and for just $15 million.
Plants on Queen St will appear in pots, not sunk into the ground. No big new trees. The gutter edging is concrete, not bluestone. There are no patterns in the paving, like at Te Komititanga.
There are indented parking bays for service and delivery vehicles, but no car parks. Buses stop inline, which means in the carriageway. They won't slow the traffic because over time it's not expected there will be much traffic.
Queen St has been redesigned to discourage driving to it or through it. You go around, or you park in one of the parking buildings nearby. There are several.
Cars aren't banned. There's just no reason for them to be there.
Simon Oddie calls Queen St "transit and mall", which means buses and pedestrians. Oddie is the city centre project director for the council's urban regeneration agency Eke Panuku, which is the lead agency for this work.
When those buses are all electric, which is expected by 2030, and with underground railway stations at the bottom of Queen St and halfway up, the traffic plan makes good sense.
It's part of the zero-emissions plan, but not only that. Experience overseas and here suggests it's a strong formula for increased shopper numbers.
But the larger plan does have some challenges, especially in relation to bikes and e-scooters, and the role of cafes and restaurants.
The linear plaza comprises what Jenny Larking calls a "movement" zone and an "activation" zone.
Most pedestrians will probably still walk where they always have, under the verandas. Cyclists, scooter riders and "fast walkers" will use the "Waihorotiu path" outside them.
There's nothing physically to separate these two parts of the "movement" zone. But the Waihorotiu path will be delineated by changes in the paving and some painted designs by mana whenua artists. They "tell the story of the Waihorotiu stream flowing beneath the street and also provide safety cues for riders and walkers using the path", according to a council statement.
Outside them is the activation zone: space for tables and chairs, art installations or anything else the retailers and council might agree should go there.
Why isn't the Waihorotiu path a dedicated lane for bikes, scooters, skateboards and other micromobility vehicles?
Larking said it had been "discussed a lot" but they decided that because the street is "a big pedestrian area" and "pedestrians get priority", it would be wrong to use part of it exclusively for bikes.
That doesn't make a lot of sense. The first purpose of providing a dedicated bike lane is to make the footpaths safer for pedestrians, by keeping bikes, scooters and skateboards away from them. That's how you give pedestrians priority.
Larking also said there would be "problems with the loading zones". That's not really true: the route of the Waihorotiu path runs alongside the loading zones now.
Then she said, "We want a clean urban realm."
Sadly, Auckland Council has never wanted a bike lane on Queen St, but everyone will suffer because of its intransigence.
The upside is that, if or when council changes its mind, it will be very easy to convert the Waihorotiu path into a dedicated bike lane.
Oddie, an engineer and one of life's enthusiasts, knows how to take the long view too.
"Because of the way the whole development is built," he quietly suggests, "problems can be addressed over time. Cities are never finished."
WHAT EXACTLY is that "activation" zone for? Standing on the Wyndham St corner, Oddie told me the central city has "the best cafes and restaurants in the city".
Even to the extent it's true, those restaurants are in other parts of the central city, like Britomart, Federal St and Karangahape Rd. There are very few restaurants or cafes at all on Queen St.
But the plaza has been created for cafe tables and chairs. If that happens, it'll be the making of the street. Will it happen?
Jenny Larking said, "That's the hope."
She talked about it having a "Queen St flavour". What did that mean? "I'm not sure yet."
Was the council going to curate this in some way? Work with landlords to bring in the right mix of hospitality tenants?
It doesn't seem so.
"I think council, at the end of the day... can build a street, but it's actually the landlords and the retailers that create the Queen St experience."
That's in sharp contrast to, say, Cuba St in Wellington, where council and landlords worked together to create the now-famous Cuba St vibe.
Sitting in a cafe near but not on Queen St, Larking said, "There's tension between the businesses and the council." She paused. "I'll call it tension."
It's also in contrast with Christchurch, where the council is considering a proposal to penalise landowners who leave sites undeveloped. A good mix of carrots and sticks might work wonders for Queen St, where despite the enthusiasm of Nike, SC Luxury and others, there are still far too many empty shops.
There are no plans for the Strand building, for example, where the arcade and its shops have been abandoned for far too long. How's Queen St going to revive fully if council can't find a way to lean on the owners of buildings like that?
Oddie talked about the importance of "activating" the street block by block.
"It can't be homogenous," he said. "We have to ask, 'What's unique to each block?'"
What Prada needs is not the same as what Farmers or JB Hifi needs. But is this true? Doesn't the whole street need a whole range of different kinds of cafes and restaurants?
Who's going to make that happen?
It seems the answer is: no one.
So here's an idea they can all have for free. If it's too hard to get cafes into the empty shops, put food trucks on the linear plaza, with tables and chairs, and activate the space that way.
If it doesn't work, you lose nothing. If it does, permanent cafes and restaurants will soon emerge. Some of those food truck operators might take the leap themselves.
Pop-ups or Prada? Queen St businesses have argued about it for years. But how about both?
AND HOW about a parkour contest?
Steve Armitage is keen. He's a tall, lean, crew-cut guy who looks like he might have run up and down a few walls and roofs himself in his time. His background is in tourism and events and right now he's steering a new strategic plan through Heart of the City (HOTC).
Why parkour, also known as free-running? Because young people.
HOTC's old focus was anchored by the glamour shops – Prada, Gucci and the like – in Queen St's bottom block. The city needs those shops, but you can't build an entire retail strategy around them.
"The central city was too focused on visitor ships and the eastern suburbs," Armitage says. "Covid exposed the risk."
The plan he's helped develop looks to three other sectors: young people, ethnic groups and residents.
"Diversity hasn't been recognised well enough in the marketing," he says. "And we're not really thinking about good reasons for young people to come into town."
All three sectors are targeted by one of Armitage's signature proposals: a Thursday night food market in Lorne St.
"We're working on the emotional side," he says. "Putting up some good answers to the question, 'Why come into the city?'"
And he wants to bring similar events together, to create a bigger splash. Why, he asks, are Art in the City and Art Week different events?
Art in the City, which is on now, has taken over a lot of the empty shops downtown, especially in Queens Arcade. Pop-up galleries – and look up: there are artworks hanging above the lanes and in the trees.
There's also a continued focus on "safety and security", although he admits there are co-ordination issues to work through.
"A lot of the businesses like to do their own thing. They might have privacy issues or they just like doing things their way. But we're working on it."
The council's Jenny Larking says it "all comes down to people. Everyone talks about the vibrancy of the city centre. But what we need to focus on is flooding it with people."
She doesn't think that means waiting for the empty shops to be tenanted again.
"My opinion is that the shops are an indicator of activities. If we can get the city centre to be populated with employees, retail will respond."
Isn't that a tough ask, with declining office worker numbers?
"Well, it's not only about people who are already here. If you have a destination shopping attraction, where you create a unique shopping experience, hopefully that's enough to bring people in to shop."
Prada is destination shopping. So is Smith & Caughey. "Yes," she says, "and so is K Rd."
And so is a good food market. It doesn't need to be a particular kind of shop, it just has to be a really good version of itself.
"It all comes back to an experience. Retail, dining or entertainment."
Actually, the K Rd precinct has a lot to teach Queen St. There's a wood workshop on Cross St called the Warren, where you can go and get help and advice, use the tools, hire a space to work.
Why not transplant that idea into an empty shop on Queen St? Why not apply it to computers, bicycles, cooking, embroidery, whatever you can think of? Pop-up shops, to help bring the people.
A FEW weeks ago I walked down Queen St about 6.30 in the evening. It was raining and the streets were gridlocked. Why?
The shops were shut. There are no bars and restaurants there. There are no garages opening on to the street, either. No one had driven to Queen St because there was nothing to drive there for.
They were all just trying to drive through it, when the traffic plan for the city hopes they will, instead, drive around.
It'll change. But maybe it will take a little while.
There was an enormous fuss all the way through the Quay St roadworks, but look at how well that precinct works now - for everyone, including drivers. Urban designers like it too: it's won a swag of awards.
Meanwhile, police have stepped up their engagement and the days of scary crime stories appear to be over.
On Queen St during the day now, it's quiet. Lots of people, not so many noisy vehicles. Once you notice the lack of an urban roar, you get a real sense of how delightful it will be. And safe: a canyon with some of the deadliest air pollution in the country will quickly purify itself.
Simon Oddie is fond of the word "incremental". You keep making changes, keep making it better. "Do learn do," they like to tell themselves at Eke Panuku.
Steve Armitage said he had "yet to encounter anyone who says it's the wrong thing to do." But, he added, "We have to ensure there's enough in it for everyone."
Queen St needs more shops for residents. But now the shoppers are returning and events planning is hitting high gear, it's all possible.
How about a pet shop?
Five ways to make a good thing great
1. A curator for the street, to establish a cafe and restaurant presence.
2. A dedicated lane for bikes and scooters.
3. Carrots and sticks for landlords that leave shops and arcades empty.
4. A bold dose of imaginative design for the linear park.
5. Food trucks on the plaza.
