The Wynyard Quarter Benchmark Research for Waterfront Auckland – Draft Report May - July 2012 1 Contents Introduction........................................................................................................................................ 3 Key findings ........................................................................................................................................ 5 The Auckland Waterfront -Overall ..................................................................................................... 6 The Wynyard Quarter - Visitation patterns ...................................................................................... 12 The Wynyard Quarter - Perceptions ................................................................................................ 19 5.1 Attributes of the area ............................................................................................................. 27 Future Plans for the Wynyard Quarter ............................................................................................ 34 6.1 General support for revitalisation .......................................................................................... 34 6.2 Support for the specific plans ................................................................................................ 35 6.3 Information ............................................................................................................................ 40 Future plans for the Auckland Waterfront ....................................................................................... 41 Waterfront Auckland ........................................................................................................................ 45 Local businesses and other stakeholders ......................................................................................... 46 9.1 Relationships .......................................................................................................................... 46 9.2 Quality of communication and consultation ......................................................................... 49 9.3 Shift to Waterfront Auckland ................................................................................................. 51 9.4 Support for developments to date ........................................................................................ 53 9.5 Lifting equipment ................................................................................................................... 57 9.6 Future plans ........................................................................................................................... 58 Appendix .......................................................................................................................................... 63 2 Introduction This research updates a project conducted in 2009, in order to monitor the impact of changes since that time. Changes since 2009 have of course been immense, both in terms of the revitalisation of the Wynyard Quarter and the shift from Sea + City Ltd to Waterfront Auckland. A core purpose of this research was therefore to assess the impact of these changes on: • Public, stakeholder and local business perceptions of the Wynyard Quarter. • Public, stakeholder and local business support for and concerns about future plans for the Wynyard Quarter`. • Stakeholder and local business perceptions of Waterfront Auckland (along with public perceptions where the public knew enough about Waterfront Auckland to comment). • Public, stakeholder and local business perceptions of other key waterfront developments including the planned cruise terminal and events space at Queens Wharf. Consequently, the other key purpose of the research was to identify how any positive performances on the measures above could be maintained and how any negative performances could be improved. The research involved quantitative and qualitative stages, with the quantitative research conducted before most of the qualitative stage. The full research programme is outlined in the table below: AUDIENCE QUANTITATIVE QUALITATIVE General public - local residents N=250 telephone survey 2 x focus groups (8 participants in each) May 24th to June 9th July 2nd & 3rd General public - other Aucklanders N=1000 online survey 1 x focus group (8 participants) June 1st to 17th July 3rd General public - visitors to the N=250 face-to-face survey Qualitative hall test (Series of interviews Wynyard Quarter May 31st, June 1st-2nd with 1-3 participants covering 40 respondents in total) July 12th Very important individuals - key - 12 individual depth interviews stakeholders May 31st to July 17th Very important individuals - local - 10 individual depth interviews businesses May 31st to July 17th The following should be noted: • Local residents are defined as people living in the area bound by Curran St, Jervois Rd, Ponsonby Rd, Hopetoun St, Pitt St, Greys Ave, Mayoral Dr, Queen St, Fort St, Britomart Place and the Waterfront. This area is virtually the same as that used in the 2009 study, with the addition of the area bounded by Queen St, Fort St, Britomart Place and the Waterfront (previously the boundary continued straight down Queen St to the Waterfront). This marginal change is unlikely to have had a significant impact on the results because of the small population of the new area relative to the local resident area as a whole. 3 • The sample size for the local resident and visitors to the area survey is the same. The margins of error for the two surveys of n=250 for 50% figures at the 95% confidence level are therefore both ±6.2%. • ‘Other Aucklanders’ describes Aucklanders who live outside the defined ‘Local Resident’ area. The margin of error for the other Aucklanders survey (n=1000) for a 50% figure at the 95% confidence level is ±3.1%. • The preference would have been to have online or face-to-face surveys for all three general public segments because of the value of showing visual representations of plans for the Wynyard Quarter. It was decided, however, that the only efficient way of covering the local resident sample was through a telephone survey, because of the small proportion this group makes up of the overall Auckland population. • Combining results from the three quantitative surveys is not recommended because of the relative size of the different populations (i.e. local residents would only account for a tiny proportion of the results if included relative to population of the ‘other Auckland’ region). • The ‘hall test’ with visitors to the area involved a qualitative researcher intercepting people while they are in the area and conducting a 5-10 minute qualitative interview. Quotas helped to ensure that researchers covered a wide range of visitors to the area (e.g. parents of children using the playground, tourists and restaurant/café customers). • Key stakeholders include a range of organisations Waterfront Auckland identified as being particularly important. These included large organisations and selected local businesses. • The interviews with local businesses targeted senior representatives of a range of businesses operating within the Wynyard Quarter who had not otherwise been selected as key stakeholders. • Partly because of the low response rate in the 2009 quantitative survey amongst stakeholders and local businesses, this part of the research changed to a larger qualitative study. 4 Key findings There has been a marked improvement in almost all measures covered in this research since the last time it was conducted in 2009. The revitalisation of the Wynyard Quarter has lifted the image of the area and helped to improve perceptions of the organisation behind it (i.e. Sea + City in 2009, Waterfront Auckland in 2012). Perhaps more importantly, satisfaction with what has been done to date has helped to shore up support for future developments. Respondents raised far fewer concerns about the future plans than they did in the previous study, even though the plans themselves were very similar. This seems to reflect satisfaction with the current plans helping to make many people more confident that the future plans will live up to their expectations. The research showed marked differences between local residents and visitors to the area on the one hand, and other Aucklanders on the other hand. This shows that experiences of the area as it is now are key influences over attitudes towards the future plans. Local residents were far more likely to have been to the Wynyard Quarter than other Aucklanders (as, of course, were respondents in the visitors to the area survey) and went there much more often, and seemingly as a result they were more confident about the future plans. Complaints about the area from those who had been were few and far between, whereas those who had not been often raised concerns which are actually addressed within the current development and the future plans (such as concerns about building height and inclusion of residential areas). This supports the view that a key way to get people to support future plans of the area is to get them to experience what the area is like now. Relations with key stakeholders and local businesses are generally good, and in some cases excellent. While the bulk of the respondents in this category were positive about their relationships with the organisation and about the plans for the Wynyard Quarter, a significant minority have little trust or regard for Waterfront Auckland and are very