This Busy Auckland

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1054, 19 August 1930, Page 8

This Busy Auckland

WHAT CITY HAS TO SELL

IF anyone wishes to learn the meaning of competition among shops and business houses soliciting custom in the City of Auckland a call at the Town Hall would prove enlightening—even startling. The civic survey which has been quietly in progress foi the last two years lias resulted in the collection of a mass of data which now includes details of each and every business and activity going on in the City, from perfumeries to picture houses, from women’s clubs to chemists’ shops.

The information which has been collected and correlated for notation on a great map being prepared under direction of the City Engineer, Mr. J. Tyler, for the Town Planning Board, is more than interesting to those engaged in business —it is valuable. For in terms of the fine art to which town planning has been reduced it is the thing in modern planning to prescribe the number of shops, professional businesses and so forth, which may flourish without undue competition within an area of measured population.

Giving an idea of the hive cf industry and commerce busily working in the immediate vicinity of Queen Street, Mr. C. E. H. Putt, chief draughtsman, who is preparing the civic map under Mr. Tyler’s direction, lined out an area yesterday 200 ft on either side of Queen Street on its entire length from Karangahape Road to Quay Street. This strip has been measured on the map for convenience sake, including as it does all buildings fronting Queen Street, and receding to the depth of the- sections upon which they stand. The whole is what is known as the Queen Street shopping area, the total of shops fronting Queen Street being 532, of which 63 at present are empty. In this area stand 34 warehouses, 6 private hotels, 5 boardinghouses, 1 large residential institution, the Y.W.C.A., 13 licensed hotels, 13 apartment houses, and the habitations of no fewer than 138 single families. These, of course, consist largely of the families of caretakers of large buildings and of persons who live above shops. A glance at the civic map reveals what a tremendous business it is to minister to the inner needs of hungry man. When the young wife remarks airily to her husband that she will be out all day and that it is no use his coming home to lunch the famished man may have choice of no fewer than 50 restaurants or eating houses wherein to have his meal. Now this number 50 means places where a man can get a cooked meal; not those in-an-out-again resorts where he goes for afternoon tea. Of these there are 10, not including the popular rendezvous attached to the large department stores.

New Zealand people are famous from the point of view of both the sweets-maker and the dentist for their ability to consume vast quantities of confectionery. Within this strip neighbouring Queen Street, 25 sweets shops do a thriving trade. Becoming thirsty after a toothsome purchase, little boys may then slake that thirst at one of the seven orange drink stalls. “I’m a smoker . . . aren’t we all?” Indeed, it would seem so, for all the sophisticated brands may be bad at the 35 tobacconists’ establishments. That spring suit . . . where’s th2 best tailor to be found? There are 33 tailors ready and willing to give you a fit and a try-on. Boots, boots, boots! Twenty-oue boot stores have the newest shape, black and tan, and all shades. Three more cater solely for repairs. Winter or summer, the 21 chemists’ shops are under the patronage of sneezing or sun-burned Auckland. To these add 10 in a similar way—those who offer milady the fragrance of gay Paris; rare cosmetics to wit. Still for the adornment of the sweet and the young may be mentioned the six furriers’ establishments and the 29 milliners’ shops.

Then there is this business-like miscellany:—Auctioneers, 4; butchers, 4; bookshops, seven; cake stalls and home cookery, 12; fruiterers and greengrocers (mostly Chinese*, 13; fish, and fish and chips. 7; florists, 12; general stores selling almost anything. 5: watchmakers and jewellers, 17 and 15, respectively; music, 20; outfitters, 21; pork butchers and small goods, 4; photographers, S; pawnshops, 6; radio dealers. 6; stationers, 6; sporting goods, 5. For our amusement 13 picturehouses offer the latest in talking entertainment and 5 dance halls syncopate alluringly. For a secluded hundred 10 billiards saloons permit of a quiet hour. And clubland. We have 12 clubs hard by Queen Street, places devoted to the interests of men or of women for social or aesthetic communion. Of churches or denominational institutions there are six, and as for Government departments in this muchgoverned community 10 departments housed in separate buildings facilitate our commerce or see to it that we obey the law. C.W.