Shades is a challenge

Press, 24 June 1985, Page 8

Shades is a challenge

Mavis Airey talks to Wendy Gapes who is moving on from her job as sales and public relations manager at Noahs Hotel, to manage the Shades Shopping Precinct.

Wendy Gapes did not hesitate when she heard The Shades Shopping Precinct was looking for a new manager. “Jobs for women executives come up once in a blue moon in Christchurch, so you have got to take the chance when it’s offered,” she declares.

After nine years in the travel industry, most recently as the Sales and Public Relations Manager of Noahs Hotel, she wanted to learn something completely new. “It’s a challenge, a risk, but I feel it’s very right for.

me at the moment.” Over coffee in the Willow Room where she started her career at Noahs as a restaurant supervisor, Wendy Gapes manoeuvres knives and forks and placemats to illustrate the organisation of The Shades.

One of the largest shopping malls in the country, it has three separately-owned wings and 77 tenants, mostly retail outlets, but also the Pescator restaurant, the Shades Tavern, and the central tearooms on the mezzanine floor.

Making it all run smoothly seems to require a range of skills that would make most managers blench.

Wendy’s predecessor, Peg Johnston, described managing The Shades as having to act not only as a “bush accountant” but also as a mediator dealing with tenants’ gripes, and a “comprehensive tradesperson”

with the knowledge of a plumber, a carpenter, a drainlayer, a cleaner, and an electrician. All this in addition to being an ideas person and motivating force. Wendy Gapes does not claim to have all these skills, but feels her experience at Noahs will stand her in good stead. “Both jobs involve a lot of P.R. If you can deal with people impartially you will be all right. “The way I see it, if I can cope with a 208-room hotel, I can cope with 77 shops —

it makes it less terrifying to look at it that way!” She is no comprehensive tradesperson, but points out, “In a hotel you have electricians, plumbers, housekeepers, and you are going to pick up as you walk

around that something is not right — like the curtains need washing. You get an eye for it. It’s the same in any building.” The promotional and public relations aspects of the job particularly appeal to Wendy. At Noahs her duties included organising all advertising, promotions, and media relations for the hotel, and involved sales trips to commercial clients and travel agents from Wairarapa to Bluff. She enjoyed meeting so many people, but the travel is something she will not miss.

It is a major reason for leaving the job. “It’s very lonely, especially for a woman, travelling alone, staying in hotels you don’t know, sleeping in strange beds, staying only one night in every town.” The travelling has nevertheless given her some interesting insights into regional differences. “Christchurch, for me, is the easiest city to work in. In Wellington it takes longer to get to know people. “With Wellington clients, even long-standing ones, I always phone before a visit; in Christchurch I can just pop in.” Southern hospitality lives up to its reputation.

“Down South it’s marvellous,” says Wendy, “I got tea and bikkies all the way.”

What she will miss is the staff at the Hotel. “It will be strange going from working with 250 people — 300 in season — to an office of four.”

Wendy has been working closely with Peg Johnston every week-end in preparation for taking up the managerial position at the beginning of July. For the moment she does not plan any major changes. “Peg has set up the job so

well. She has done all the ground work. I will follow along the same line.” The main problems she foresees are avoiding repetition in the shops, and keeping up the high standard of maintenance appropriate to the mail’s deliberately upmarket image. “I like the idea that people can go to The Shades to get a good mix of high quality shops,” says Wendy Gapes. She compares the precinct favourably with Sydney malls, “where you have to fight your way through the rubbish to find the good shops.”

Mavis Airey, who recently joined “The Press,” was brought up in Christchurch and studied English literature and history at the University of Canterbury. She spent nine years in Britain, working for Thames Television, before moving with her husband and family to Belgium. There she worked for six years as a freelance journalist, principally for “Time” magazine. In 1983 she returned to New Zealand, and has spent a year as a reporter and presenter on Television New Zealand’s “Science Express’ programme.