This bit from The Press's story puzzles me though.
She hoped to serve alcohol upstairs while operating Hot Damn! on the main floor. However, consent rules required a 2-metre x 2m wheelchair-capable toilet in a shop 4m wide so it was decided the entire space would be devoted to the bar.I would be pretty surprised if the store included an elevator. If it did include an elevator, I can understand a Council rule wanting the wheelchair-capable toilet in the upstairs bar. If the bar had only been located upstairs, though, and if access were only by stairs, I'm a bit curious why Council might insist on a wheelchair-capable toilet in an upstairs-only bar accessible only by stairs. Perhaps the licence would have allowed customers to bring their drinks downstairs with them, triggering the toilet requirement?
I'm happy that there'll be another craft beer bar in Christchurch.
But does it really make sense that Christchurch's building regs would have required full wheelchair-capable toilets in tiny tiny venues?
"Is Auckland going from mandatory parking minima to mandatory parking maxima?"
ReplyDeleteIt seems to go with fashion.
Back in the early eighties, when Queen St was still far and away the country's preeminent shopping precinct, the fashion became to limit downtown parking andimpose parking maxima on downtown buildings. This was supposed to encourage public transport use.
Instead, would-be shoppers simply drove ten minutes further to Newmarket, where the then borough council (this was before Michael Bassett's flawed council amalgamation)was more than happy to provide as much parking as shoppers wanted, and to allow as much new parking as property owners wanted to build.
As you might expect, this was when Newmarket's Broadway usurped Queen St as the place with highest retail rentals, with all that implies.