Auckland Council has voted today to sell seven major properties, including the central city services building in Graham St and council buildings in Orewa, Papakura and Pukekohe.
The decision will save $117 million in unbudgeted maintenance.
The civic building over the railway station in Henderson will not be sold.
6 Henderson Valley Rd. Photo / Supplied
A central city site on the corner of Wellesley St and Mayoral Drive, currently home to a car park and the pop-up Griffiths Garden, is among the properties that will go. The site will become the main entrance for the underground Aotea Station on the City Rail Link, and is expected to have a large tower block erected over the station.
The total amount of property to be sold has been unofficially estimated as worth about $170 million.
Mayor Phil Goff heralded the decision to sell, saying it had three great benefits. It would lead to better services for Aucklanders, better working conditions for staff and a "far better use of ratepayers' money".
The decision was presented to the council's Finance and Performance Committee today by Rod Aitken, the council's head of corporate property. He said it was part of a larger strategy to make the council's property holdings "fit for future purpose".
The council owns 104,000sq m of property. That's enough to fill three buildings the size of the council's main building, on the corner of Albert St and Wellesley St. It says it needs only 58,000sq m, or enough for two of those buildings, to carry out the functions currently housed on those properties. It will now sell the remainder.
"To keep the buildings, and maintain them," said Goff, "would cost an amount equivalent to almost a 1 per cent rates rise."
In addition, while the council's draft 10-year budget allows $93 million for building maintenance, that's $117 million short of the $210 million that would be required if the properties were all retained.
The new strategy, in contrast, will be self-funding. The council says the proceeds from the sale will be "ring-fenced" to provide better services for the public and better working conditions for staff.
Three "hubs" will probably be established in Albany or Westgate, the central city and Manukau, with 25 "spokes", or flexible multi-purpose council spaces, in the rest of the region. Less than half the Auckland population lives within 10km of a public council office at present. With the new strategy in place, 96 per cent will be within that radius.
The property surplus has arisen because Auckland Council has not sold much property since it was amalgamated in 2010. The property to be sold now is "legacy council" property. Problems include poor maintenance, being in the wrong places to service population growth, and not being the right kind of buildings.
"If we were establishing the Auckland Council today," Aitken said, "we would not have these buildings and many of the services would not be in the places where they are now."
He gave the example of Orewa, where the council owns two buildings on Centreway Rd that used to be home to the Rodney District Council. The district council no longer exists and the buildings are used today by the Rodney Local Board, among others.
50 Centreway Rd, Orewa. Photo / Supplied
But Orewa is not even in the catchment of the Rodney board. It's in the Hibiscus and Bays board area. The new strategy will provide the Rodney board with a home in its own catchment.
However, Julia Parfitt of the Hibiscus and Bays board said her board was strongly opposed to the sale, and added that staff and local residents were too.
Aitken and Sharon Coombes, the council's manager of workplace strategy, both took issue with that.
Aitken said a survey in the Rodney Times had asked people how they felt about losing the council centre in Orewa. "That was the wrong question to ask," he said. "They're going to get better service."
Coombes told council that in their latest internal "engagement survey", which measures staff satisfaction levels, staff at the Orewa offices had the lowest rates of any in the city. The citywide average was 51 per cent satisfaction, but at Orewa it was only 40 per cent.
Aitken added another statistic about the benefits of upgrading. Staff at the council's Manukau centre, he said, which has been recently modernised, were "28 per cent more efficient" than staff in the Graham St building, whom he suggested were frustrated with their working conditions and had not had an upgrade for 20 years.
Cr Wayne Walker of Albany made an angry speech saying the sale proposal "lacked any sense of a civic strategy". He criticised it for being "solely a commercial proposal".
Goff made a passionate speech of his own, calling the plan "very much a civic strategy". He cited the better access the public would have to council services, and the better working conditions they would provide for staff. And he said he wasn't troubled by making "sound commercial decisions".
"Do we keep Orewa for sentiment's sake? Spending $117 million of our money, there and elsewhere, that we don't need to spend?"
He said to those councillors who had their doubts, "I'm happy to go into anyone's ward and explain this. Everywhere I go, people say to me, show us the savings. Well here they are. Any councillor who wants to debate that with me, in public, I'm very happy to do that."
Nobody took him up on the offer and the strategy was adopted by a vote of 15-4.
What the council will sell The buildings and land agreed for sale are: 4-10 Mayoral Drive, central city 35 Graham St (and associated buildings), central city 6 Henderson Valley Rd (excluding the civic building), Henderson 4 Osterley Way, Manukau 50 Centreway Rd, Orewa 35 Coles Cres, Papakura 82 Manukau Rd, Pukekohe
