Fine art of blocking street

Joy Tongue says the attendance at her exhibition opening was well down. Picture / Kenny Rodger

Newmarket art gallery owner Joy Tongue is furious that roading contractors closed her busy shopping street to traffic without notice on the day of an important exhibition opening.

The closure of Kingdon St between Short St and Khyber Pass Rd, to build a large crossing platform for pedestrians, meant a disappointing attendance for the opening of West Coast artist John Crawford's first Auckland showing in 18 years.

Crawford, whose ceramics and drawings have been exhibited in Germany and Taiwan, spent 18 months preparing for Monday night's opening at Mrs Tongue's Studio of Contemporary Art.

Attendance was well down on the usual 150 or so art aficionados who normally turn up at such events.

"John Crawford flew up from Westport to see the exhibition, he spent 18 months working on it, and only about 50 people showed up," Mrs Tongue said. One dealer emailed the gallery yesterday to say he arrived at Kingdon St on the night but turned away when he saw the road was blocked off, assuming he had the wrong date.

The gallery is one of about eight retail outlets complaining of business drying up from the week-long closure, and Mrs Tongue wonders why the roadworks could not be done at night.

Although the Auckland City Council says residents' concerns make it next to impossible to work at night, the only apartment in her closed section of Kingdon St is believed to be unoccupied.

She said she found 18 contractors' vehicles jamming the street yesterday morning, including those of workers on a large building construction project on its intersection with Khyber Pass Rd, forcing her to deliver paintings to customers who could not get to the gallery.

The closure also came at a bad time for dress shop Second To None, which would normally be frantically busy preparing for the school ball season.

Stephanie Marsters of the shop said the closure followed more than a year of disruption from the building project across the street, which had been dug up seven times for services to be laid.

"This has all had a huge impact on our business," she said.

Even a co-host of television's Dancing With The Stars, Candy Lane, had difficulty dodging the roadworks to return dresses she had borrowed from the shop for last weekend's semifinal of the show.

City council project manager Arvind Sima said the roadworks contractor had uncharacteristically forgotten to deliver letters to the retailers warning them of the closure, and he was assured it would not happen again.

"I wonder if, because they have so much work on at the moment, this is one job that has fallen through the cracks."

Mr Sima, who is also under pressure from the Newmarket Business Association to ensure there are no more communications slip-ups, said noise controls made night work difficult and it was also hard to obtain supplies such as concrete after hours.

"Concrete has to be booked well in advance and if you miss a booking, you have to wait one or two weeks for another load because of the demand for concrete," he said.

Although Mrs Tongue questions the need for a pedestrian platform in such a small street of generally slow traffic, Mr Sima said it was part of a corridor the council was developing to encourage more people to walk or cycle between Newmarket and central Auckland.

"It is part of a strategic package, but we apologise [for the lack of notification] and will try to get out of there as soon as we can."