Serious question: How many bookstores near you driven out of business by greedy landlord fuckery are still empty store-fronts generating precisely ZERO income? I've got a not-too-little list... - ThreadSky

craigmranapia.bsky.social • 21 days ago

Serious question: How many bookstores near you driven out of business by greedy landlord fuckery are still empty store-fronts generating precisely ZERO income?

I've got a not-too-little list...

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brekekekiwi.bsky.social•21 days ago

So many

newimprovedtom.bsky.social•21 days ago

I wonder how many of those don’t mind the zero income because they can claim tax breaks? And otherwise they’re just happy land banking.

slyall.bsky.social•21 days ago

In a lot of cases if the rent charged is too low it violates loan agreement with the bank.

Whereas if property is vacant then as long as loan payments are made everything is good

craigmranapia.bsky.social•21 days ago

Probably all of them, and this is how I get radicalised into a straight-up Commie who will nationalize everything I can pry from the cold dead hands of the haute bourgeoisie.

aethylred.bsky.social•21 days ago

We’ve got book shops popping up in small towns now that the local landlords have bought up properties that were devaluing when owned by out-of-district owners. New bookshops in Foxton, Sanson and Bulls

musoruth.bsky.social•21 days ago

And bars and cafés - especially in Wellington.

craigmranapia.bsky.social•21 days ago

We moved north for the husband's job twenty-two years ago, and every time we visit Wellington my heart rage-cries a little harder.

lcsnz.bsky.social•21 days ago

Not just bookstores by a long shot

craigmranapia.bsky.social•21 days ago

Absolutely not, but my train of thought was prompted by this foolishness from my Catholic diocese that should stick to its knitting...

https://newsroom.co.nz/2025/06/09/catholics-close-hard-to-find/

craigmranapia.bsky.social•21 days ago

I can't even with the kind of idiocy that would prompt a landlord to pretty brutally fuck over a stable tenant to put a property on the block at the bottom of a stagnant market.

juliefairey.bsky.social•21 days ago

But they are about to have a train station entrance open just up the road in 2026 so this may actually be a good commercial move for them. I don’t like it but I see their logic. Ps loving your full character arc and how the PAS/Twitter/Kikorangi folks have radicalised you 🥰

craigmranapia.bsky.social•21 days ago

OTOH, maybe I'm just getting more easily irritated with age. A distinction without a practical distance, but if the Auckland Diocese is so short of ready cash I'm sure they'd rake in the coin for this prime position Ponsonby character residence!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishop%27s_House,_Auckland

jgreenbrookheld.bsky.social•21 days ago

New Pope gas brought he broom.

dreddieclark.bsky.social•21 days ago

The Parsons shopfront is still empty. *A decade* later.

tslumley.bsky.social•21 days ago

We're just coming up on eight years vacancy for the place "Hard to Find" moved out of. Well, except for a week of selling fireworks one year.

craigmranapia.bsky.social•21 days ago

On Lambton Quay? I pretty much keep my eyes closed when passing through the Wellington CBD nowadays, just to prevent a fatal cranial rage bleed. I'm also still pissed that the Parsons in Auckland shuttered, despite all good faith efforts to sell it as a going concern.

craigmranapia.bsky.social•21 days ago

What really worries me is that there's an awful lot about the book trade - from general bookselling through specialists to secondhand/antiquarian - that you can't learn from an online course. You start snuffing out the experience and institutional memories, that has consequences.

jgreenbrookheld.bsky.social•21 days ago

Not sure of their rental status, but I know of two independent bookshops in Auckland that have actively opposed progressive zoning changes that would logically support their businesses. Mainly around parking and infill housing.

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