The final designs for the long-awaited Courtenay Place revamp have been released. Joel MacManus takes a closer look at the details.

At an embargoed media briefing on Wednesday, Wellington mayor Tory Whanau and a team of council staff showed journalists a 3D-printed model of Courtenay Place. For about an hour, council officers answered detailed questions about the minutiae of the design. The Courtenay Precinct is the heart of the city’s entertainment economy and the level of detail in the design shows how deeply council officers have thought about the layout.

It’s important to note that this is not a proposal, a consultation document or another business case. This is it. At long, long, long last, this is the final design. The council has signed a construction contract for the first stage of work on the Cambridge Terrace end of the street and is currently negotiating a second contract for the remainder. Construction will begin in April.

My main takeaway from the briefing was simple: this is good. The design will make Courtenay Place a better, safer and more vibrant street. There are some parts I’m particularly excited about and others where I hold out a bit of scepticism.

Here are some of the top takeaways from the new design:

The mayor is willing to lose the election over this

In her opening speech, Whanau cited former Dunedin mayor Aaron Hawkins, a fellow Green Party member, who tied himself to the George Street redesign. The project was controversial while it was under construction and the consensus view is that it cost him re-election. Now that it is complete, the upgrade is overwhelmingly popular. Whanau fully expects the same thing to happen here. The Golden Mile has been a controversial debate and will be unpopular while roadworks are ongoing, but she predicts that it will be well-received once it is complete.

However, the timing of the local body election is terrible for her. When polls close in October, Wellington’s main street will still be a construction site. There won’t be any opportunity for people to get used to the new street and change their minds. There’s a strong chance this issue could cost Whanau the election. She had the opportunity to cut the project and save some dollars during the Long Term Plan debacle, but she considered the Golden Mile an untouchable bottom line. This is a project that Whanau genuinely believes will change Wellington for the better, and if it costs her her job, so be it.

A bike lane that fills a gap

Wellington’s bike network desperately needs a central connector – the city has built several arterial routes into the edge of the CBD, but there’s a black hole in the middle of the city, which makes it difficult for riders to access workplaces and retail areas. In the new design, the busy Newtown-to-city bike lane will turn onto Courtenay Place and continue until Taranaki Street at the centre of Te Aro.

The tradeoff with this bike lane is, of course, space. The bike lane takes space that could otherwise be given to pedestrians, though the new footpaths will still be much wider than the current layout.  It also creates a potential conflict zone with pedestrians, but it is lined with planter boxes to keep the spaces separated.

More trees, but not yet

The video fly-through showed an enormous amount of greenery, including several fully grown trees and new rain gardens for wetland plants. It’s a great touch. Urban trees have been shown to have myriad benefits, including improving air quality, reducing public health costs, reducing noise pollution, and simply making people happier. However, the trees will be planted during the final stages of the project, so the visual improvement may not be obvious during the construction phase. 

An opportunity on the side streets

Blair Street and Allen Street have always felt like a missed opportunity. The Courtenay Place side streets are wide, lined by beautiful old buildings and are a low-traffic zone. And yet for years, they’ve basically just been used for parking. In the design, both streets still have plenty of parking, but they become one-way streets with removable bollards at the Courtenay Place end. It also means the two streets can quite easily be closed to vehicles without requiring complex traffic management – which could allow them to be used as event spaces for fairs, markets or outdoor concerts. On the day-to-day, it means pedestrians on Courtenay Place won’t have to wait for cars to cross.

A new performance stage, but an underdeveloped plaza

I was hoping to see a bigger redesign around the pedestrian plaza on the Taranaki Street and Courtenay Place intersection. It’s a strange area that has never quite lived up to its potential as a public gathering place. Widening the pavement or even just rearranging the seating could have made a difference. However, it is mostly unchanged in the new redesign. This section was rebuilt more recently than the rest so the council has decided the cost to redo that bit isn’t justified.

The one change to the area is Ngā Ūranga, a new stage and seating area for street performers, featuring power outlets for lighting and sound.

An overcorrection on bus stops

The plan for the Golden Mile has always been to slightly reduce the number of bus stops so that buses can move more smoothly without as much disruption. The current positioning of bus stops is a holdover from the old tramway system and staff think this new layout will be more efficient. It’s not a huge change – everywhere on the Golden Mile is still within 300 metres of a bus stop – but could cause some annoyance.

The new design removes the bus stop outside St James Theatre, and the opposite location outside Reading Cinema. I’m a little sceptical about this idea but willing to be proved wrong. These stops are not particularly well-used, but that could change once the Reading complex opens again. There are large loading zones on both sides of the road which could be converted to bus stops if demand justifies it.

Finally doing something about lighting

The new design includes more street lights, placed more evenly throughout the street. This is a small but important change. Research shows better street lighting is a reliable and inexpensive way to reduce crime. A US department of justice study found that improved street lighting led to a 21% decrease in crime. Even more so, better street lighting improves perceptions of safety, which is essential for a nightlife area.

In praise of the pavers

If you’ve ever had the misfortune of walking down Courtenay Place in the rain, you’ll know the orange footpath tiles are slipperier than a banana peel coated in lube. Thankfully, the new tiles are much grippier. Staff confirmed they had tested the pavers and found they were still grippy even when covered in water, wine and fried chicken.