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Thursday, Sept 11, 2014
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Office rents sky-rocket BY SUE NEWMAN
SUE.N@THEGUARDIAN.CO.NZ
As new buildings rise in Ashburton’s commercial heart, high rents might price them out of reach of many potential tenants, an Ashburton businessman says. Ric Thorpe has been scouring Ashburton for an office for his accountancy firm and said he was surprised at what he was finding. There was a general feeling that rents in new builds were likely to be around $350 a square metre. Many older buildings had been charging between $160 and $180, he said. That leap in rental could put Ashburton in danger of losing its unique character where independent stores provided colour and character because the cost of doing business was just too high. “At the moment you’ve got something that’s not like a city mall.” High rentals could often only be afforded by chain stores and that wasn’t what Ashburton’s retail heart had traditionally been about, Mr Thorpe said. The Eastfield complex planned for a block of land between Cass, Burnett and Tancred streets was a great example of what could be done by a group of landowners working together and he applauded the development’s drive
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Flying district’s flag Monique Cooley will be carrying the hopes of the Ashburton District on her shoulders when she travels to Auckland for the build up to this year’s Miss Universe New Zealand contest.
to be a place for boutique and smaller shops. “It’s fascinating. It shows the power of collaboration,” he said. That collaboration could also extend to businesses that required only small floor space, where tenancies could be written that included more than one business, creating economies of scale for tenants, he said. “Rising rents could force people to think laterally about how they let space and how they take up space. Otherwise you run the risk of ending up with a high street that looks as though it’s been taken out of a city mall.” While there might be a gulf between the needs of developers and the expectations of tenants, Mr Thorpe said rising rents also created opportunities to do things differently. “I was wandering around your Triangle the other day. Right now it’s pretty tired but perhaps this could have a massive rejuvenation. “There’s nice old character stuff here that would end up with cheaper rental.” For years Ashburton’s rentals had been cheaper than those in Christchurch but the gap was closing, Mr Thorpe said. At $350 a square metre a small business looking for a small premises would have to find more than $20,000 a year before it opened its doors, he said.
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