The new $50 million Holcim cement store will be linked by pipeline to the Jellicoe Wharf berth at which Holcim bulk carriers will dock.
It will be dome-shaped, peaking at 28m high, sitting alongside the existing $45 million, 2700sq m Golden Bay "horizontal silo" that opened in January 2010.
This followed a deal with the Auckland Council-owned port company and council officials that persuaded Golden Bay to agree to an early departure from its storage facilities at the Wynyard Quarter Tank Farm.
The Golden Bay facility has two buildings - a bulk storage depot, 18m (six stories) high, 84m long and 28m wide, and a smaller 22m (8 stories) high service centre.
When it opened in 2010, it was estimated that about 60 bulk truck tanker loads of cement a day would leave the site.
Holcim now ships cement to Onehunga from its Westport manufacturing plant. That plant will close in mid-2016 once the new Auckland silo, and a matching one in Timaru, are ready.
Local production will then be abandoned, to be replaced by imported cement. Holcim says it has all the necessary planning and building consents for its new facilities, and its new Auckland base enables it "to supply direct into one of its major markets".
Because Auckland as a region decided many years ago to retain a downtown port, and concentrate port activities to the east of Queen's Wharf, there will be those who will say that the die has already been cast, so we should just let Ports of Auckland get on with making a profit for we shareholding ratepayers.
On the other hand, one of the selling points of creating the Super City was that it would give Aucklanders the chance to have a say about the development of the city, particularly when it involved important areas like the waterfront.
Yet when it came to cement, if you'll forgive the pun, the old silo mentality continues to prevail. Not only in relationships between the port company and the council, but between various arms of the council. As for the rest of us, forget it - we didn't get a look in.
On the one hand, the council issues an artist's pretty impression of a sun-bathed, almost car-free Quay St and says it is at the "very early stage" of obtaining design advice on the Quay St makeover and that proposals will be considered by councillors and the public before any decisions are made.
It's all part of soft-soaping us into believing we're all part of the design process to create a great waterfront and city centre. Yet while we sit back and check for various long overdue plans for areas like the CBD waterfront and for Queens Wharf, and admire pohutukawa-framed impressions of Aucklanders at play near the Ferry Buildings, those who have always made the decisions continue on their merry way.
In this instance it would have been nice to know that someone had checked whether it really was necessary to have huge Tweedledum and Tweedledee cement silos alongside each other on some of Auckland's most expensive real estate.
True, we're told of the need for more competition in the building trade. But I'm guessing that one man's cement is very much like the next's.
And if fiercely competitive petrol companies can combine at Marsden Point to not only store, but jointly process their competing goods through one plant, then why can't a couple of cement moguls do likewise.
What comes next? Renewed pressure from the port company to reclaim more land?
