Editorial: City needs to make more of sea

I'm visiting my old home town briefly this week and while there I'm hoping to squeeze in a quick tour of Auckland's flash new waterfront precinct.
This weekend was the opening of the first stage of a project to revamp Wynyard Quarter, which will cost an eye-watering $120 million and take 25 years to complete.
That's a mammoth project, but one with a goal most Napier residents relate to: bringing life to an underused waterfront.
Auckland's old silo farm and Napier's shingle beach may seem worlds apart but the problem is the same: a city with its back turned to its best asset, the sea.
That's not to say Napier doesn't already do a lot of things right - Ahuriri and West Quay are exactly the mix of recreation, entertainment and working marine industry that Aucklanders are spending millions to create.
But along the Marine Parade foreshore, there's a curious lack of connection with the sea, except as a spectacular backdrop for walkers, joggers and cyclists using the Rotary Pathway.
EIT students have come up with some ideas for a waterfront redevelopment, prompted by Napier-based Labour list MP Stuart Nash, who thinks there's a need for revitalising the area.
And they seem like good ideas, mostly focused on finding more ways for people to get closer to, or onto the water.
But wouldn't it be great if there were also more things to do, as well as places to look at the view?
We're building a fantastic new museum and art gallery, right on the cusp of the inner city and the seafront, and it seems to me that would be a great place to start thinking about how to link the city with the water.
What if you could browse the museum, have a bite in a cafe on a waterfront pier, take a gondola to the top of Bluff Hill, then wander down to Ahuriri for dinner?
We don't have $120 million to spend, true, but it can't hurt to dream.