Patriarch of Parnell
By Michael Brett Auckland Star, Friday, November 11, 1988

At 76, Les Harvey still harbours urban dreams

Les Harvey is standing beneath his favourite Parnell tree passing the time with an American tourist. He is telling her he planted the pretty white flowering cherry: a gift from Japan , sent in gratitude by a couple whose little daughter Harvey comforted when she became lost in Parnell Rd.

The morning is crisp and the sun shines. The patriarch of Parnell is in his spring attire with a fresh yellow carnation poking out of a battered 40-year-old panama.

A less likely looking property tycoon is hard to imagine.

The grey suit is of a cut of two decades ago. Pants and jacket do not quite match. His striped shirt is open at the neck and bulging at the waist. His feet are playing up with gout so he wears soft, comfortable sports shoes.

But he is in good heart, waving his walking stick at passers by, calling to favourite tenants. “Hello darling,” he says to an attractive 40-year-old woman; “hello young man,” is the greeting to a 50-year-old.

His head is cocked to one side and he seems to squint. Glaucoma has cut his eyesight to 10%.

He moves to the nearby coffee bar, inspects and praises the deli section, then sits beneath an umbrella near the footpath and surveys his domain.

He has planted many of the trees up and down the street, laid the bricks, helped convert old houses and back yards into Auckland 's favourite street.

Asking him for financial details – how many properties he owns: how to financed his dozens of purchases – is about as satisfying as punching marshmallow. He is too shrewd to be specific. He would rather talk about people and ideas.

“I don't know how many there are,” he says, “maybe 200, maybe more.”

He admits to owning nearly 200 in Parnell alone. On top of that there are the Ponsonby Properties and Martha's Corner, parts of Wyndham St ; at least one property in Albert St ; another in Nelson St. Then there's Coatesville and a little bit of Orewa.

The remarkable part of Harvey 's purchasing is that he never sells anything; so never shows a profit. His acquisitions were financed by borrowing – “banks or anyone who would lend me the money” – and the payments made out of rentals from the purchased properties.

At times there have been liquidity crises and Harvey has been known to ring around his friends for instant loans.

He is no accountant, yet he knows about accounting. He is not a bricklayer or a carpenter, yet he physically did much of the conversion of Parnell village.

“The Harveys are great workers,” he says. “We all work physically. I have two marvellous sons and a daughter. We are all part of the team.”

Why Parnell? Because he lived in Grafton Rd as a child and went to school in Parnell. All his friends lived in Parnell. When he came out of the navy in the early 1940s owning property in Parnell became a goal, an obsession.

“I said to Zena (my wife) I'd like to buy the whole damn street and keep it,” he remembers. “It wasn't feasible to keep the houses as residential properties, but I hit on the idea of converting them by knocking out the front parlours and turning them into shops – except that I did it on a slightly grander scale.

“I was lucky at the time in the council, particularly in town planning. It could see what I wanted to do; I think I used to amuse it with my dreams. It said go ahead. It wouldn't be possible with the lot we've got now.

“Parnell has ended up as a place that does many things. It enables people who like a pleasant life-style to enjoy themselves; it brings beautiful women into the area; it brings thousands of overseas tourists who love it.”

At 76 Harvey is slowing down. Yet he still clambers down the cliff face from the Campbell's Bay home to fish for snapper off the rocks; still gets up about four, still comes to Parnell daily to “a tiny office” which no one seems able to pinpoint.

He has a pretty Malaysian secretary and is on a help-Asians kick because he regards them as excellent workers. As he has his coffee break two Chinese stop to talk with him.

“These people are real workers,” he says. “We need real workers. We've got to get this country off its backside.”

He insists he is still active and has numerous major projects swirling in his mind. He wants them completed in his lifetime.

There is a big block in Nelson St where he wants to build “something exiting” – maybe a car park with residential or office accommodation on the top. “There are marvellous views over the harbour.”

There is a skinny building running from Albert St to Cathedral Square , where Harvey has Le Brie and King Tai restaurants as tenants.

He loves food, as his ample waistline and gout suggest, and wherever Harvey is involved food outlets get priority.

He has a dream of replacing the present building with “something incredibly beautiful.” He envisages an archway stretching from Albert St to Cathedral Square . There would be restaurants in the fingers above and beside the archway and offices above that.

“I would have a jacaranda in the square,” he says. The jacaranda in Parnell Rd he bought for ninepence from Woolworths.

He wants a carpark building in the gully which runs between Parnell and the Domain, both for Parnell shoppers and university students. He owns most of the houses in the gully – and in total about 5ha of land.

He envisages an overhead rail link between Parnell and downtown above the existing railway which runs alongside Carlaw Park .

For years he has been beavering away in Ponsonby development. “It would have been ridiculous to try to turn Ponsonby into a Parnell,” he says. “I put in shops which people in the area want. There's a marvellous bread shop on the corner of Summer St and Ponsonby Rd ; a baby shop and a plant shop.”

Harvey chooses all his tenants and says the criterion he wants is excellence in whatever shop is being opened. He regards himself as a fair landlord.

“Ask my tenants, especially those who have been in Parnell for some time,” he says. “Many of them are young or haven't much money. I try to help them.”

Harvey 's Parnell rents have the reputation of being high.

“One of the penalties of restoring and maintaining old buildings is the cost of maintenance,” he replies, “higher than for new buildings.”

The truth is probably that Harvey is no more demanding than most landlords and better than some. He has rapport with many of his Parnell tenants and a walk down the street with him is a show in itself.

He even frequents the second hand shop for women's clothes. Harvey has made at least one purchase – an old fur coat to wear when fishing at Kawau Island . He has owned a section with a Spartan hut on it in Vivian Bay for nearly 50 years.

The late Colin Cole was his longest Parnell tenant. Tony Astle (Antoines) is the oldest at the top end of the village.

When Cole died Harvey released his widow from the lease and kept the shop vacant for six month as a sign of respect.

“I'm not a goodie but there are certain things that are important,” he says.

Harvey met Cole on the North shore ferry. “He was clutching a brown paper parcel and he kept looking inside it. I was interested and asked him what he was carrying. It was the first female outfit he had made on his own. The size was the same as my wife's so I bought it. Colin became my tenant from then on.”

Tenants and visitors to Parnell ponder what will happen when Les Harvey passes on. They fear the properties will be sold and the bulldozers will move in.

Harvey is confident there will not be much change in the foreseeable future.

“I know things cannot remain as they are forever but as long as the Harveys are in existence what we have here will be in existence.”

“I'm not worried about death duties because the properties have been passed on to my children.

“I learnt my philosophy from my grandparents and my parents. I'm certain my children have picked up the family knowledge and the family philosophy…”

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