Interview with Ashley Church

Last Thursday I was able to meet with Ashley Church, the CEO of Newmarket Business association in regards to his opinion about the extension of the university and how Newmarket will have to adapt. He had a lot to say and his strong views helped me to gain a deeper understanding of what Newmarket wants to achieve over the next decade.

I asked him a set of questions to make sure I collected all the information I need for my news story. He had great, detailed answers, which included:

In what ways do you think this new development of Auckland University is going to impact Newmarket?

Its going to impact Newmarket in a number of ways in terms of its immediate impact it will bring a much larger number of people with the relocation of the Epsom teachers training college and the Tamaki campus to Newmarket. This will also have an impact on traffic flows.

The number of people is also going to bring some new opportunities and some new challenges, they will be younger people so that means that we will have different types of businesses that are likely to open in Newmarket. I’ll give you an example of that at the moment we have restaurants and cafes and a few bars but we don’t really have anything that closes after midnight. This will bring a whole new complexion to our businesses, so there will be bars that open to 2-3am in the morning etc. because they will need to cater to that market.

It will also change quite substantially over time the whole retail complexion and business complexion of Newmarket because you’re talking about a pretty substantial group of people using the services here.

It will also change the business complexion of the other side of the road on Khyber Pass. At the moment there are commercial services, which will become I think more retail and education-based services that are complementary to the university.

So the answer to your question is substantially.

How do you think Newmarket may have to adapt to cater for a large influx of students?

We do 10 year strategic planning in Newmarket, so every year we add a year to the end of that and we take a year off the front. So It’s always a 10 year plan and in terms of that it will change the nature of that plan quite substantially, so whereas that plan over the last 2 or 3 years has been very much about a particular vision that we had for Newmarket, while that vision will remain we will have to take into account what this impact is going to have on it. For example the sorts of amenities that we might provide, the traffic network in Newmarket, the ways in which we would support the university as a member of our business community. There’s a whole range of things that we will have to do in terms of making sure that we continue to service that and make sure that it fits in and integrates with the Newmarket community rather than does it own thing.

Residential accommodation is another thing, so student accommodation etc. which is another impact. There will be I would imagine not straight away but over the next 2 or 3 years you’ll start to see some consents for some quite big residential developments as people recognise that that’s an opportunity and you’ve only got to look around Auckland University and AUT to see how that happens.

I’ve spoken to a few shop assistants about their opinions and they all had very positive views. What do you think this development will bring to the local community and businesses of Newmarket?

MONEY- and lots of it. Students are notoriously poor but they’ll be a lot of them so there will be a lot of money going into the Newmarket businesses.

We have a reputation for being high end fashion but also have had up until recently a reputation for being about older fashion so that will change, it will have to change. So you’ll find that the fashion demographic will skew downward quite considerably and there will be a lot more stores for younger women in particular and that we will need to cater for a demographic that we haven’t traditionally catered for.

So the challenge for us will be, do we still try and maintain the whole quality high end fashion thing within that demographic? Or do we discard that and do we say no it’s a different group of people that we are appealing to. That question hasn’t been answered yet and is going to have to be worked through.

So lots of economic opportunities, good thing for Newmarket overall and the other thing we might look to develop over time is symbiotic relationships between the university and our community. So to the extent and that will depend to a large degree on what disciplines are actually being offered at the university. I understand at this stage it’s going to be engineering and teachers training but I would imagine that will grow. So we will be looking and saying well to what degree can we offer internships and opportunities for cooperating with the university to help both parties essentially with those things.

I videoed the last 2 remaining questions and this will be apart of my final new story which explains what Ashley’s message will be to all these new people coming into Newmarket and how it is investing in our future. I will use his answers in my story to balance the opinions on this development.