IN Kotara, Hugh Sanderson is busily fitting out a retail space and waiting for deliveries of supplies, as he prepares to open his new camera shop.
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At the same time in Mayfield, lawyer Ross Mason and his colleagues are unpacking boxes and assembling desks in their new offices on the corner of Maitland Road and Hanbury Street.
They may be in different professions and are now operating in different suburbs, but they do have one major factor in common. They are just two of the businesses that have recently left the Newcastle CBD.
"It's disappointing to have to move on from a location you've been embedded in," says Mr Mason, whose law firm has had an office in the Civic precinct since 2001.
The massive transport and parking changes, along with building developments, designed to bring people into the city's heart have effectively driven these businesses out.
Newcastle Lord Mayor Nuatali Nelmes acknowledges the "significant disruption" to some businesses, but believes all the development offers new opportunities, and a new life, for the city.
"It's a double-edged sword," Cr Nelmes says. "If nothing ever happened or no construction was done in the CBD area, then there wouldn't be any future for that CBD area."
The plan may be about Revitalising Newcastle, as the catch phrase has it, but these two business people, and others, say the overhaul of the city has been contributing to diminishing patronage for them.
"I'd say we're down by about 20 per cent," says Hugh Sanderson, the owner and manager of NDF Camera House at 261-263 Hunter Street.
When the light rail was being constructed out the front, Mr Sanderson says business fell by 10 to 15 per cent. He expected those figures would improve once the project was completed and the trams were on the rails.
"Even though it's finished, it [business] seems worse," Mr Sanderson says.
After 33 years in the city, Mr Sanderson has decided to head to Kotara, because he believes the new shop in Northcott Drive offers two advantages now denied the CBD location: good passing traffic and readily available parking.
"I don't get that in Newcastle anymore," he says. Neither do his customers. They stayed away during the light rail construction, but now, for those who drive into the city, "it's traffic jams and the lack of parking".
Car parking - or a lack of it - is a prime reason why Mason Lawyers is this week moving out of its Hunter Street offices.
Ross Mason, who is the firm's director, says the combination of the light rail, construction work around the former Civic railway station, and the removal of car parks to make way for more building development has impacted on his legal business.
"Clients don't want to come into town, it's become way too hard to do business," says Mr Mason.
Government planners, Mr Mason believes, have not sufficiently taken into account that Newcastle is different to Sydney.
"They've had the Sydney mentality of, 'It's okay, we've put in a light rail, they'll use it', whereas Novocastrians are used to jumping in their cars."
There has not been enough focus on alternative parking, he says, and "how you manage that Novocastrian mentality, 'Where do I park?'".
In response to that question, State Member for Newcastle Tim Crakanthorp is raising in Parliament the NSW Government's decision to stop funding the park-and-ride bus service between Hunter Stadium at Broadmeadow and the city centre.
In the notice of motion, Mr Crakanthorp argues the service freed up 200 parking spaces in the city. Further, he notes, the park-and-ride buses has been used by 51,571 passengers, and has reduced the number of vehicles entering the CBD by 40,362, since the service began in November 2017.
Mr Crakanthorp says he "condemns the Government for making the transport chaos in Newcastle worse with this decision" and has called on Transport Minister Andrew Constance to reinstate funding for the service.
The Newcastle MP says says he is "very regularly" receiving calls and emails from businesses who are doing it tough in the CBD. He has compiled a list of 18 businesses in the Hunter Street area that have left or are moving. And it is a list that is growing.
"It breaks your heart, it's very stressful," Mr Crakanthorp says.
Read more: Newcastle's park-and-ride to finish
Furniture and interior design business House of Elliott is not moving out of the city. But the work going on at the East End residential development across the road from the Perkins St store has forced owner Tina Elliott to shift the retail part of her business to The Station in Scott Street.
"I don't really have a choice but to make the move; either that, or I close," Ms Elliott explains.
"I'm trying to move stuff out today, and I can't even get my truck in. Access is impossible."
Tina Elliott has no quarrel with the developers but with Newcastle Council and what she sees as its lack of accountability and ability to manage the impact of construction projects on CBD traffic and parking.
Tina Elliott estimates that 18 months ago, after the former David Jones car park closed to make way for the East End development and with the light rail construction, her business from foot traffic plunged 90 per cent.
"It went down immediately," she says. "If anything, since the light rail [has opened], it has got worse.
"Prior to the car park closing and the light rail, we would never have had a time when there was no one in the shop, whereas hours will go by now without someone here."
On Tuesday, Newcastle councillors supported a Lord Mayoral minute to implement a rate assistance plan for small and medium businesses experiencing financial pressure from development construction in Hunter Street Mall and Newcastle East.
"I believe it will hopefully go some way to ameliorating some of the businesses concerned that are impacted by the construction that will happen in and around the mall area, particularly over the coming two years," Cr Nelmes says.
Tina Elliott says she will look at that plan, but in the meantime, she has to continue paying rates on the Perkins Street building that she owns, as well as levies, to the council.
"And get this - I have to pay the council rent for my new premises [at The Station]," Ms Elliott adds.
At the light rail's official opening in February, Andrew Constance, said, "Business people are going to obviously adapt to a change in infrastructure that goes in, and this city for too long has had too many naysayers. Now look at it: it's booming."
But others question the word, "booming", particularly for traders.
"The city is not booming unfortunately," says Tim Crakanthorp.
Bob Hawes, the CEO of the Hunter Business Chamber, describes commercial and retail life in the CBD as "patchy".
In an interview with The Newcastle Herald for the weekly online series, The Issue, Mr Hawes says there are hopes people who have recently moved into the city to live and work will be in sufficient numbers to replace those who no longer see the CBD as a shopping destination.
But just as the city is physically changing, he argues the mindset of Novocastrians has to change as well. Traders need to attract potential new customers, and shoppers have to accept they may not get a car park out the front of a store anymore.
"A lot of it comes back to the transition that we have experienced," Mr Hawes says. "It's not only unprecedented in its scale, but also unprecedented in the rate it's happened.
"We think what's happened is a lot of people are coming back into the city, but their habits can't be the same as what they were."
Lord Mayor Nuatali Nelmes urges Novocastrians to see where the city is headed, and where the CBD has come from.
"We're in a better position than we were a decade ago, 100 per cent," Cr Nelmes says. "And, yes, it's always a permanent work in progress, and, yes, you're going to have conflicts with construction and traffic and parking, and in an ideal world, all of that construction would be completed.
"There are businesses that have also chosen to locate in the city centre and can see there is already a future underway, noting that that future is under construction."
But some businesses view their future out of the CBD.
Ross Mason sees this as an opportunity for his law firm to move into "bigger and better" premises at Mayfield.
Hugh Sanderson is preparing to open the NDF Camera House in Kotara in mid-June, with high hopes for new business.
"Newcastle has been good to me over the years," he says, but adds that as for the future of the city's heart, "It's definitely not a shopping hub".
