Shopping – Spanish style...

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33381, 13 November 1973, Page 15

Shopping - Spanish style...

El Paseo is completed. Christchurch’s first two-level shopping complex now has 11 shops open on two floors, and all work on the basement section is finished, including a walkway from the Lichfield Street site to Tillmans and on to Millers.

As the name suggests, the decorative theme of the complex is Spanish: dark i kauri beams, ornate black wrought iron, bold hexa-gon-patterned carpets, and | stained-wood bay windows i on the 11 shops. Its designer and developer (Mr Tracy Gough) I chose the Spanish-style architecture because he wanted a unifying theme that would not go out of I date and that could take j advantage of the huge dark beams which were discovered when he and his wife, Coralie, began work i on the warehouse which they bought at 76 Lichfield Street in July, 1972.

“There is tremendous potential for a shopping complex in this area,” says Mr Gough. The business district can spread only in this direction; there are several big successful stores nearby; and the closeness of two parking buildings makes us almost the centre of the developing shopping area, once mainly devoted to warehouses.”

The complex is situated next to David Bradford’s Salon and Tiltmans Furnishers and opposite both Beath and Co., Ltd, and the D.I.C. Its aim, says Mr Gough, is ’’to provide an attractive place to browse and shop, away from the traffic and out of the weather, with a wide variety of shops and somewhere for a snack or a drink.”

The ornate, superbly finished wrought iron which complements the tiled roofs of the bay windows was designed by Mr Gough, who learnt welding while doing national service in the Army, and he was helped by a friend, Mr Ted Coats, a university student.

Mr Gough’s university

training—in engineering — enabled him to design most of the extensive alterations to what was once a dingy warehouse, but a firm of professional builders was also involved. The result is a distinctive arcade with an interior finish of a very high standard. El Paseo means “the place’’ or “the walk,” a name discovered, Mrs Gould revealed, by searching through a Spanish die. tionary. The name of her shop, La Tienda, means, simply, ’’the shop.” Mrs Gough’s university studies in psychology helped her in an extensive survey the couple carried out before deciding to set up shop in Lichfield Street. ’’We took a head count of shoppers in the area, and the number of people coming Into the arcade these days has shown that the risk we took has paid off,” she said. El Paseo is open from 9 ami. until 5.30 pjn. daily, and until 9 p.m. on Fridays.