Photo: RNZ / Adam Burns
Christchurch's fight over food trucks is being labelled unfair and infuriating on one side and anti-competitive on the other, with no sign of a quick resolution.
The issue is so fraught that the city council is calling in an independent commissioner. The Press reporter Sinead Gill calls it an unsolvable question, while one local in a letter to the paper's editor saying it is "little more than a faux outrage-based promotion of one branch of the hospo community over another".
But business leaders keen to stay out of the fight worry too much attention is on the stoush between the cash-strapped Christchurch Arts Centre and businesses in the city centre.
"The last thing we want to be perceived as is a small town having bickers between two key parts of our central city," Business Canterbury head Leeann Watson says.
"The Arts Centre is a real jewel in our crown, they've spent millions of dollars restoring it, it's a fantastic facility that does attract tourists into the central city.
"The flip side is that we've got businesses who've made a significant investment setting themselves up, back into the central city when they could have chosen to go elsewhere."
The issue came out of the blue last week when the Christchurch Central Business Association presented an unexpected petition at the council meeting, objecting to an application by the Christchurch Arts Centre for consent to allow 33 food trucks on its site, to run at least 12 hours a day, seven days a week.
Chair Annabel Turley told the meeting that if the plan went ahead, all long-term funding of the Arts Centre's Trust must be halted. She said it would send a dangerous message to brick and mortar business owners who had struggled through a harsh winter and faced much higher costs including rates.
"Why pour your heart into a permanent business when you can pop up a caravan and cash in?"
Supporting her was businessman Richard Peebles, owner of Riverside Market, a popular indoor venue with restaurants, bars and boutiques set up five years ago.
Gill, who reported the meeting, says they are worried about the threat of competition from the Arts Centre.
"I don't think the Arts Centre see themselves as competition because they've had food trucks there for decades, it's almost always been a weekend thing."
She says the story is much bigger than the food trucks fight and goes back to March when the council cut the centre from its draft 10-year budget. In the previous three years it had received $1.8 million in operation support.
After an outcry from supporters, the council reversed the move but sent a clear message to the centre that it needed to look at other ways of generating more revenue. Gill says that led to weekday food truck trials.
"There is that argument of, well this is them taking that on board," she says.
Watson says she wants a compromise between the two Christchurch "jewels" and a focus on attracting tourists.
"Hopefully there's room for everyone but we need to make sure there's an even playing field and these sorts of challenges need to be addressed.
"If we can grow the size of the pie versus changing the sizes of the slices then everyone gets a little bit less, that's not what we want here. We actually want to create a bigger pie."
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