Historic wall coming down
The historic bluestone wall gracing Albert St is now coming down brick by brick.
The 139-year-old wall in Auckland's CBD is being painstakingly dismantled to make room for the country's largest infrastructure project, the City Rail Link.
It will take about three months to deconstruct the wall which will eventually be moved one metre east towards Queen St.
Stonemasons are cutting it into 1800 blocks, numbering each block and storing them safely off-site until the wall is rebuilt in 2023.
“It’s going to be a bit like fitting a jigsaw together except all our pieces will be rocks, not bits of cardboard or wood, there will be no missing pieces and we’ll know where every piece fits,” said Aotea Station manager for the Linke Alliance, Matt Sinclair.
The bluestone wall was built from local material by contractor Daniel Fallon in 1881 during a time of major infrastructure expansion in Auckland.
The wall's underground public toilet was one of the city's first.
The wrought iron railings, piers and the ornamental arch over the stairs on the side of the wall are some of Auckland's last remaining examples of street furniture dating back to the Victorian age.
The public toilet, which has been closed for some time, will not reopen because of space constraints.
But the toilet's cast iron screens will be restored and reinstated on site.
The toilet's entrance will be used as a maintenance access for the City Rail Link.
The new 150-metre long section of tunnel being built by the Link Alliance will connect the new Aotea underground station with the tunnel already built from Britomart Station.
Shakespeare Tavern owner Sunny Kaushal said the iconic pub will remain open during the wall deconstruction nearby.
"We have to otherwise we can't survive at all because we're struggling with mounting debts and also keeping the staff who we've been trying to support for the last three and a half years," he said.
"We've been affected by the City Rail Link really seriously, then Covid happened," he said.
"This has been a double whammy for us."
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Christmas Eve busiest shopping day of the year with more than 500,000 sales
Busiest shopping day of the year
Peak time 12 noon-1 pm - 563,303 transactions
Per second peak - 167 transactions
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Number of sales beats Black Friday, but lowest Christmas Eve in six years
Christmas Eve has been the busiest shopping day of the year with 9,745 sales a minute at its peak.
Payments company Worldline says noon to 1pm saw 563,303 sales recorded on its network, down by about 7 percent on a year ago.
The company's network covers about three-quarters of the electronic terminals in operation.
Worldline did not have a dollar value for spending, but the peak number of transactions was the lowest for the past six years and well shy of the record 679,436 in 2019, before the pandemic.
Earlier this month it noted rising sales in the first three weeks of the month, but they remained 1.3 percent lower than 2024, with most parts of the country trailing the previous year's spending.
Official data from Stats NZ to the end of November showed a small rise in spending on the previous month, to 1.6 percent higher for the year.
Retail spending has been subdued as households have remained cautious because of high prices and a slow benefit from lower interest rates, and as well as concerns about the soft labour market.
However, recent surveys have shown improving consumer sentiment with ANZ bank's monthly report showing confidence at its highest level in four years.
Boxing Day is traditionally the country's favourite shopping day, but with Black Friday spending also softer this year the amount going through retailers' terminals may also be down on a year ago.
Adding a dampener to consumer spending may be the recent rises in longer term fixed mortgage rates because of higher wholesale rates.
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