Richmond: Not much to see

BY GEOFF COLLETT

Welcome, as they say, to Richmond; not that you'll necessarily know you've arrived – nor, for that matter, see a good reason to slow down.

"I've talked to people in the past who have said, 'We have come to Nelson for years ... and we always thought Richmond was some kind of industrial suburb – we didn't realise it had a retail centre'," says Phil Taylor, a dedicated champion of Richmond business and a high street retailer there.

"Overseas tourists don't stop in Richmond, and the irony is almost every one of them travels past."

Recent rejigging of the major intersections, meant to feed passing traffic into the heart of the town, has improved things, he says, but there's still a way to go.

Look at McGlashen Ave, the main entry point to the town centre from the Richmond Deviation. Or maybe don't.

"Looking up there, people are hardly going to think, `This is a place I want to go'," Mr Taylor says of the scrappy streetscape.

Robin Simpson, an urban designer who has a particular interest in the way Richmond presents itself to the world, echoes the sentiment.

"If I didn't know that area at all, what would give me the idea that this was a place I wanted to stop ... and what would give me any idea of what the character of the place I was going to was? And what would tell me where I needed to go for what?"

For years, it seems, Richmond and its civic leaders have been content to let the town muddle along, staying true to its roots as a no-fuss rural service town, not a place that takes much interest in things like urban design, or spends public money on fripperies like fancy landscaping.

"I just think it's how we've always been," says Tasman Mayor Richard Kempthorne.

The problem is, it seems that the world is passing Richmond by.

If first impressions are what counts, the drive into Richmond from Gladstone Rd can be a troubling one.

If a traveller is coming from the Coastal Highway – maybe after a day spent savouring the beauty of Abel Tasman National Park or the cafes of Mapua – the first view of Richmond is from the Appleby overbridge at Three Brothers Corner. In prime position is a stack of car wrecks.

For the next couple of kilometres, there should be no doubt that working the land and catering to population growth is the source of wealth here: places specialising in roofing, timber, water tanks, machinery, tractors, pumps, pipes, tyres, fuel, garages, engineering.

There are, to be fair, several modern motels, the entrance to a retirement village, some playing fields, a colourful but aged public toilet, and a small building with a discreet sign advising that it is the local tourist information office.

It now has lots of traffic lights, too; but the strange thing is the absence of even a single sign announcing that the retail hub of Tasman district is but a stone's throw to your right.

By the time you've negotiated the three sets of lights and the bewildering array of lane changes the highway descends into at this point, you're likely to be in the fast lane to Nelson city – but not before you've got the chance to admire the grimy backyards of the Beach Rd light industrial area and the worse-for-wear rear fences of suburban Richmond.

Mr Kempthorne promises that the lack of signs – long a bane of the town's promotional group, Richmond Unlimited – is on the Tasman Dictrict Council's to-do list.

As well as signs pointing the way off the state highway into the town centre, a plan is in train, he says, to create a nicely planted spot near Network Tasman on the highway just before Three Brothers, with signs announcing the imminent presence of Richmond town.

Council staff have also been talking about some simple, low-key plantings to screen the dire views along the deviation.

What about Gladstone Rd? Is the town stuck with the no-frills appearance of its main highway entrance?

"I think it probably is," Mr Kempthorne concedes.

But he adds that the council has signed up to an urban design protocol under which he has become the "urban design champion" for the district.

"Not that I've got any particular expertise, but I'm the sort of touchstone for trying to put processes in place to improve our urban design."

He points to the planned sign outside Network Tasman. "That's going to make quite a difference," he says, admitting that, "at the moment, you just sort of merge into Richmond without knowing it's there.

"The plan is to make it attractive, not being too expensive so it becomes a problem, but doing something distinctive that looks really nice."

And if it works, and the passing traffic is tempted to flock to Queen St, is it really, as the town's catchline has it, "all good here"?

For a promotions champion, Phil Taylor is surprisingly downbeat about the showing the town's main street puts on for the public.

A former chairman and deputy chairman of Richmond Unlimited who runs shoe shops in both Queen St and Nelson's Trafalgar St (he also chairs the regional tourism agency), Mr Taylor says: "I think Queen St is suffering badly from not being upgraded. B

asically, it's a 1970s streetscape. Nelson city – Trafalgar St – completely walks all over it in terms of being an appealing place to go shopping." The footpaths are too narrow.

The street furniture is "appalling". The camber of the road is all wrong for pedestrians.

Of course, to many shoppers, the retail experience in Richmond is all about the mall, which draws customers from far and wide and provides a huge, free carpark.

The mall has done "great things" for Richmond, Mr Taylor says. But meanwhile, the high street shopping experience has slowly declined.

Richmond Unlimited has been lobbying the council to take even basic measures, such as improving the links between Queen St and the mall. But its big frustration is with the endless delays to plans for a major facelift of Queen St, first proposed in 2002.

On the latest plans, it will happen in 2017. As the promotions group complained in its last submission to the council, that "is essentially never for any business centre facing real competition from other centres, in particular in our case Nelson city".

It is a big project – the council has budgeted $6.1 million for it – and Mr Kempthorne says that before the street is beautified, underground services – water mains, cables, drains – have to be upgraded.

The council wants to impose a targeted rate on Queen St businesses to help pay for the project, and has yet to discuss that with business owners; nor has the council actually committed its contribution.

The mayor suggests that if the two parties are willing, the work could happen much sooner. Does he accept that the need is urgent?

"It's not really urgent, but it would be really good to get it done, and it would be good to get it done before 2017 ..."

So what's the mayor's view of Richmond's high street now? "Adequate. But not as good as it should be."

There is an argument that central Richmond needs more than just a facelift.

Richmond Unlimited and Mr Taylor point to a long list of services and functions the town should be planning for – tourist accommodation, tourist activities, a restaurant precinct, a community hall, a cinema, art and culture ...

There couldn't be much dispute that Richmond largely dies at night, once the shops have closed.

A handful of bars and restaurants keep a few lights burning after dark but, as Matt Bouterey of the town's most celebrated eatery, Bouterey's at 251, puts it, "people don't arrive and wander around, going for a drink here, dropping in there for a meal, there for a dessert, then going there for a cocktail. It would be so good for Richmond if it happened".

MR Bouterey's restaurant is frequently cited as the sort of business Richmond could capitalise on to bolster its image, but he's outspoken and critical of what's gone on around him.

Foot traffic has been falling outside his premises, in the middle of Queen St. He despairs at the presence of burger joints at either end of the strip ("They've made Richmond a fast-food outlet").

So is he committed to Richmond? "That's a tough one," he says. "I'd love to be. (He lives in the town.)

"I think we've got a nice little niche here ... we're surrounded by great local producers, got a great local loyal clientele, but they can't come in here all the time.

"I'd love to see more quality in Richmond, and a lot of the good places that have opened have left."

Robin Simpson is bothered by the wider forces she sees at play, such as traffic management and urban sprawl – the continuing decisions which perpetuate the sense that Richmond is all about the car.

She points to newer buildings with carparks at the front; swathes of the town centre given over to parking; the funnelling of traffic up Oxford St, which was once a reasonably quiet side street and is now part of a ring road.

All of it reinforces the sense that "the needs of roading have been prioritised over other things".

"That's the message people get when they drive through."

The loss of the town's substantial old buildings (the Railway Hotel was the last to go, replaced by a low-rise complex housing various chain restaurants) has deprived it of landmarks to help people recognise that they've arrived somewhere.

"Richmond is a waterside town," she points out, referring to the nearby Waimea Estuary, buffered from the town centre by the deviation and the sub-industrial grime of Beach Rd.

"No-one understands that if they go up a second storey, they've got water views. It's one of the untapped assets of Richmond."

The recent rezoning of 230 hectares of land off lower Queen St – Richmond West, as it's known – to provide for more residential and mixed business development will, she argues, chew up productive rural land, produce more traffic, introduce more threats to the estuary, and potentially lead to the spread of the unappealing Gladstone Rd-Beach Rd light industrial look.

Mr Kempthorne says the council will be striving to avoid the latter concern, but Ms Simpson says "the challenge is that despite best intentions to improve design quality through the urban design review panel, there's nothing legislative to ensure that really good development happens there".

She does not accept that she is swimming against the tide with her questioning of the "car is king" philosophy and the other attitudes that have fuelled Richmond's sprawl.

Things can change quickly, she reasons. The ageing baby boomer population will bring big shifts in social pressures, with changed expectations around housing, transport and town design.

But what of Richmond now?

"I think it's got a bit out of balance. I think [it needs] more of a concentration on creating a place for a wider community, and the wider needs of that community ... so that people think that Richmond is a good place to live."

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