EXCLUSIVE: Community Pushes Back On Aggressive Carparking Campaign

The owner of South City Mall has terminated his contract with Smart Compliance Management and the signage is coming down at the end of this week.

Glamore owner Stacey Johnsen said she understood that people would also be reimbursed their parking fines, if they took them into mall management.

“It’s such great news, we’re so happy,” she said.

Hundreds of distressed customers and staff working in the mall were pinged with $85 parking fines - often more than once, when the aggressive parking campaign first started on June 13.

Smart Compliance Management initially started monitoring the carpark area to help management with minor vandalism in the evening, but a month ago the security was ramped up into a full scale operation day and night.

Anybody parking longer than the standard free two hours, including staff working shifts in the mall, were targeted, and on some occasions slapped with tickets just minutes after their 120 minutes was up.

Glasines restaurant and bar owner Matt Smellie contacted whatsoninvers.nz saying that despite pleas from business owners not to implement parking controls, the mall owner ignored their warnings.

He said the landlord had taken things too far and he and other businesses had been losing customers as a result.

“We’ve had such a decrease in patronage and last week the carpark was decidedly empty,” he said.

But a letter from the landlord’s lawyer last Sunday (July 19) to his lawyer said one camera had since been taken down and power cut to the other.

“The signage will all be removed by the end of the week. There has definitely been some positive things come out of this. The landlord realised it wasn’t the best way of solving the problem of the late night issues.”

Business owners were first contacted by the landlord Sam Lee 10 weeks ago about the proposal, and Matt said he emphatically told him it was a bad idea and would cause complaints that would affect businesses, cost them customers, and result in lost revenue.

“It’s a sense of relief… and a commonsense win. And the other retailers began to realise it wasn’t a positive move. The community has pushed back on the parking, and finally the owner of the mall has realised he made an error of judgement.”