This Newsletter is to bring to your attention our recently published Heritage booklet, produced to save our beautiful hundred-year-old building.
A big part of the impetus for writing this booklet was our attachment to our building and the physical environ that we are in. As any of our customers could tell you, Piko has grown in leaps and bounds and some days it seems like a
magicians trick that so many people and so much stock could possibly fit into the shop area.
The character of the Piko building has become meshed with the character of the shop itself – it is hard to imagine one without the other.
The building is old and needs some attention, including costly earthquake strengthening work.
We realise that if we sold this building it would, in all likelihood, be pulled down and the site 'developed'. With this in mind we are committed to finding ways around staying on this site and preserving our building. We need to update the workers working environment to reduce physical stress created by lack of space. We would love larger areas for packing and processing orders and a bigger walk-in cool-store. We would love to create more space in the shop for fruit and vegetables, wheelchairs and prams and couriers.
Many minds make bright work.
The booklet includes chapters about: "The Avon Loop Experiment"
"Health Politics !" : When Piko functioned next door as a dairy, before buying the present building, it was no ordinary dairy. Cigarettes were sold, but one cent on every packet went to HEART Foundation. On Rothmans cigarettes (South African) an extra cent went to H.A.R.T. (Halt All Racist Tours).
"The Bend":
Walking North, down the end of our block to the Oxford Tce and Barbadoes Street West corner, by the Barbadoes Street bridge, takes you to The Bricks. From this part in the Avon Loop area the river flowed into the central city to the abundant Waitaha Pa, named Puari Pa. A leaflet is available from the Visitors Information Centre describing the walking trail along this part of the river. It starts in the loop at 'The Bricks' and ends at the Worcester Boulevard. Take yourself back 700 years, when this area was a vast tract of wetlands.
the buildings architecture and inhabitants over the past 100 years:
In spite of earthquakes, bricks continued to be made throughout New Zealand (especially in Wellington after a disastrous fire in 1842). All the same, brickwork never became the basic building material in New Zealand that it was in Britain, partly because of its cost, and also because of its earthquake risk.
Stan remembers the verandah outside and a wooden stairway leading down to the ground, "a wide wooden stairway in bad need of repair". Mrs Martin had a wind up gramophone on the balcony and would play 'Tiptoe Through the Tulips' over and over again. "You'd hear it all the time going past the building..."
Our 20 year old Trading Philosophy and Co-operative Culture More recent workers can't quite believe what they have struck. Nicola, the newest worker at the time of writing says; "It's the craziest place I've ever worked but I'm loving it".
Bend in the River is now on sale for $10,- , be in quick!