KEY POINTS:
There are certain media conventions that must be followed: pictures of fruity girls go on the front page, crime victims are paragons of virtue and property developers are the devil's spawn.
Take mysterious Auckland property entrepreneur Tony Gapes. Judging from the clippings file, he seems to be
what you get if you cross Donald Trump with Lord Voldemort.
His war crime: building hundreds of apartments around Auckland, including, most controversially, the aesthetically foul $150 million Scene apartments and some leaky buildings in Mt Eden. (Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't we have a housing shortage?)
Gapes' latest plan is "frightening" according to Auckland Mayor John Banks - a scary proposal to build five concrete apartment buildings with precast patterned end walls and coloured aluminium panels on Auckland's waterfront at Orakei. Oooh, I'm frightened.
Fuelling Gapes' dark lord mystique is the fact we never hear anything directly from the man himself. Last week, his company, Redwood Group, gave evidence to a hearing about the Orakei proposal but Gapes' submission was made through his lawyers.
Why? I was curious about what Gapes had to say for himself.
So I put on the fake authoritative voice I save for the tough jobs - I shoot for Kim Hill at her most gravelly, with a flinty note of Condi Rice - and rang Redwood Group's Mt Eden office. I was put straight through. (Tell ya, the d-e-e-p voice always works.)
Gapes didn't immediately give the impression he would be good at drowning kittens. His opening gambit was that he was scared of the press as "you journalists only ever write bad things about us and you don't like property developers".
When I dived right in and said I had walked past the Scene apartment buildings and they really are pig-ugly, especially at the slum-waiting-to-happen ground level, Gapes replied good-naturedly: "Each to their own taste."
Me: "Are you proud of that development?"
Gapes: "Yes."
Me: "Why?"
Gapes (gently): "Sorry, I'm really not going to talk to you. We have a policy we don't talk to the press and I'm going to stick to that."
When I trotted out all the usual self-serving media patter about putting his side of story and how it is damaging his company's brand because no one knows what a swell guy he really is, Gapes remained nonplussed (does anyone ever get plussed?).
"It doesn't worry me, to be honest. We're in the business of building buildings and making money. Among the people who have bought our properties, we do have a good brand."
Me: "But, but ... "
Gapes: "I'm not going to have it debated in the media."
Me: "But it is already."
Gapes: "It's all very one-sided which we're happy about. You can never win with you guys. It's always sensationalised. There is no upside for us [talking to the media]."
I said goodbye (an octave higher).
So I didn't learn much about Tony Gapes. But I did confirm that property developers don't exactly do themselves any favours when it comes to showing their kinder, gentler side.
On his own website there is a biography of Gapes: "Tony Gapes graduated from Auckland University in 1990 with a Bachelor of Property degree." Er, that's it.
When I googled Gapes, all I could find was an interview on a property developers' website where he was asked his reasons for moving into the Melbourne property market.
"My wife spends so much money in the city that I need to try and claw some of it back by doing some work there."
Keep drowning those kittens Tony.
