Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Viv Beck: Heart of the City CEO on Auckland's Smith & Caughey's continuing to operate

Transcript

Viv Beck: Heart of the City CEO on Auckland's Smith & Caughey's continuing to operate · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: One of New Zealand's oldest and most iconic department stores,
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Smith and Coey's, has found a way to partially save itself.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: The company has backtracked on a full closure, now deciding
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: to shut its Newmarket store and downsize it's Queen Street
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: one while focusing on online sales part of the city.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: Chief executive Viv Beck is with me this morning. Good morning, Viv,
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: good morning. This is good news for the city, right, It's.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: Great news, it really is. I mean, it's always sad
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: to think of a business closing. This keeps jobs for
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: one hundred people. It's from our perspective, great to see
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: it stay in that particular area. We've got a lot
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: of you know, construction still happening, but a positive future.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: I think this is a good sign of confidence in
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: the future of Queen Street.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: When is Queen Street going to actually become somewhere that
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: you go to. I was driving through there yesterday. It
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: takes you half an hour to get from one side
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: to the other. There's you know, beggars, not homeless people,
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: but beggars people who are grow on the street. It's
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: not a place you want to go at the moment.
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: Well, I think that's part of a challenge, and we've
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: raked all of these issues with counsel and at to
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: make this a better environment while we wait for the
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: CRL to open, which is CRL, the conventions, and there's
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: a lot of sort of milestone investments coming through in
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: the next couple of years. The safety has had.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: A lot of work.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: There's still work to do. We accept that, but a
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: lot of work has happened and is happening as we speak.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: But I think it's really looking to that period. It's
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: a period from now to when the CRL opens and
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: the end at ICC is open. There is a lot
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: of investment which does give positive shows the confidence in
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: the future of Queen Street. But I think as long
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: as we get some progress on the things we've been
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: asking to happen in that area to make it a
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: better place for people and business right now through this period,
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: having Smith and Coley live on in Queen Street is positive.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I completely with you. It's a brilliant, iconic store
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: and to have some presence still there will be important.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: Thank you very much for your time.
• 2:07
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• 2:10
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• 2:13
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