A political battle has erupted over a World War I centenary memorial in Auckland Domain, with the designers walking off the job and mayor Phil Goff stepping in to rescue the project.
Goff is considering using his powers to wrest the project off the Auckland Council's Auckland Domain committee, chaired by councillor Mike Lee, who said the committee was being punished for putting the interests of Aucklanders ahead of a group of Wellington consultants.
Tonight Goff said the memorial's design consortium, Wraight Athfield Landscape and Architecture, had difficulty working with Lee and walked away from the contract some weeks ago.
The matter has reached a point now where the breakdown in the relationship has put the project in jeopardy
This meant the council could not apply for funding to allow the memorial to be completed in time for the 100th anniversary of the end of the Great War on November 11 next year, Goff said.
"I regard it as utterly unacceptable that the project should have ground to a halt," said Goff, who today received a recommendation from chief executive Stephen Town to use his powers to take the project off the Domain committee and refer it to the governing body to resolve the matter.
"The matter has reached a point now where the breakdown in the relationship has put the project in jeopardy," Goff said.
The breakdown is over a processional walkway from the memorial up the northern slopes of the Domain to the cenotaph at the War Memorial Museum.
After Wraight Athfield was selected to design the memorial in February last year, the governing body authorised the committee to "include a suitable and subtle way" of connecting the circular feature with the museum.
Lee told Goff in an email in April this year that the design brief envisaged a somewhat modest but functional pathway on the museum's central axis to complete the War Memorial complex.
Plans by Wraight Athfield for a 42m wide walkway raising the cost of the project to between $2.3 million and $4.6m were considered outside the brief, Lee said in the email.
The committee opted for a new simplified design costing $1.4m to be completed by November next year to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the end of the Great War.
Lee recommended using the council's heritage expert, George Farrant, to help deliver a memorial which is "dignified, modest, affordable and retains fidelity to the design brief".
"The committee is being punished for sticking to its guns, for putting the interests of Auckland, Auckland Domain and the Auckland War Memorial Museum before the interests of a group of Wellington consultants," Lee said tonight.A spokesman for Wraight Athfield, which designed New Zealand's War Memorial in London's Hyde Park and the Pukeahu National War Memorial Park in Wellington, referred questions to the council.
