Free buses to quell Kmart chaos

Kmart is opening in Okara Shopping Centre next week. Photo / Steven McNicholl.

There's been an $8 million game of retail musical chairs at Okara Shopping Centre to make way for the new Kmart and avoid parking chaos.

The big box retailer opens at 8am on Thursday amid heightened anticipation and questions around where shoppers at the store would park.

Kmart New Zealand zone manager Jason Picard confirmed the store would provide shuttle buses to and from the parking lot for the first four days of opening, when shoppers were expected to arrive in droves.

Temporary parking would be provided on the corner of Okara Drive and Port Rd, adjacent to Cobham Oval, until Sunday.

"We are expecting parking spaces to fill up fast so we will run buses from the parking lot to the store from 8am to 4.30pm."

He was not anticipating ongoing issues with parking and Kmart would be monitoring the situation, looking at similar solutions for Christmas.

There are 1200 spaces within the centre, which includes those outside Kmart's main competition, Warehouse Extra.

Allan Brown, Okara Shopping Centre manager, said the spaces for its 22 stores were more than enough.

"We have more spaces than the CBD," he said.

The shopping centre facelift, undertaken by Hill Construction, is almost at an end but stores had to move over or leave, to make room for the giant store.

Despite looking for a Whangarei home for eight years, Kmart was only satisfied two years ago that it had viable option large enough for the 5000sq m store.

Warehouse Stationery vacated the Kmart site in 2012 by moving to beside its main store, while Fishing, Camping and Outdoors moved to the refurbished former Plumbing World site, which is now on Okara Drive.

Mega Surf took a step to the side, too, checking into a temporary site within the centre, which is now free again. Mega Surf has returned to its renovated store with new neighbours in Ruakaka's Country Bake, who cloned a new cafe beside Kmart, while Subway remained on the other side. More space was added to Kmart's site with the units previously occupied by Forhomes and Access Home Health at the back being bought by the landlord.

Continuing the dizzying switch, Access moved to a refurbished office unit in the Okara Plaza development and Forhomes to the Great Outdoors to Robert St.

Whangarei District Council spokeswoman Ann Midson confirmed that it was only responsible for resource consent process for stores and traffic flow outside of the shopping centre and the council was not on high alert regarding traffic flow at the Okara Drive exit outside Countdown, where there was often congestion.

Ms Midson said: "In this case, there is just one business at a site previously occupied by three."

Parking ratios were worked out by assessing the parking needs according to the size of the stores.

She said Kmart did not require any traffic management plan for its opening.

With 80 staff on the books, led by store manager Sharlene Goberdhan, Kmart will be open daily from 8am to midnight.