Dredging to begin for $30m city marina

Dredging is due to start this month for a controversial $30 million marina on the Auckland waterfront for which developers say they have sold more than 90 per cent of 173 berths.

Orakei Marina Development Ltd says it has sold 35-year leases for two of its three largest berths, each capable of mooring 40m vessels, for $695,000, plus goods and services tax.

The smallest berths, for 12m vessels, are up for $78,000, plus GST, at what is being marketed as a "boutique" marina off Tamaki Drive and between Hobson and Okahu Bays.

Annual fees will range from $1500 to $4000, but project director Tony Mair said yesterday that these would be lower than elsewhere, as Orakei would be run by a non-profit trust on which the Royal Akarana Yacht Club and Ngati Whatua Trust Board were represented.

He said $1000 annually from each berth would go straight to the Auckland City Council, which he accused of nearly ruining the project's viability by charging an up-front fee of $3.5 million, plus GST, for access across public land on the key waterfront site known as "The Landing".

But Mr Mair, a civil engineer and developer of several other marinas, said the question of seabed fees potentially payable by his organisation to the Auckland Regional Council remained "up in the air".

The public is meanwhile being assured of continuing waterfront access, along a walkway to be built on the seaward side of a new parking area for 141 vehicles, which is to be cantilevered off the shore.

There will also be a public walkway along a rock breakwater sheltering marina berths.

About 135,000cu m of sand and sandstone will be dredged from just over 5ha of seabed and mixed with material needed for Ports of Auckland's container port reclamation, giving marina vessels a draft of between 3m and 4m. Sewage will be pumped from the berths of vessels longer than 20m, and smaller boats will share a public facility at the end of a fuel jetty.

Mr Mair said his marina would be far smaller than an earlier proposal of separate developers about 13 years ago, for a 1000-berth facility, which was fiercely resisted by nearby residents and small-boat users.

The slimmer version, on which construction is due to start on March 21 and finish late next year, would be in keeping with its surrounds as "a continuation of the maritime theme".

A condition of a resource consent from a joint panel of the regional and city councils and the Conservation Department was that berth numbers could never be increased.

But Jack Sullivan, an Okahu-based boat owner for 40 or so years who chairs the Hobson-Okahu Protection Society, said the marina would be "such an eyesore protruding hugely into the harbour" and exacerbate weekend traffic jams along the waterfront.

He said it was contrary to a city council resolution made after opposition to the earlier proposal, that there should be no such developments on the seaward side of Tamaki Drive.

Mr Sullivan, who is also a member of the Royal Akarana club, feared for the safety of children learning to sail amid such large vessels, and said a survey he conducted before a planning hearing in 2003 found about 400 vacant berths in the region's existing marinas.

He doubted whether more than 50 of the 360 boats now moored in Okahu Bay for $150 to $200 a year would be worth the purchase price of the cheapest Orakei marina berth.

A resident of Auckland's "dress circle" street of Paritai Drive, overlooking the marina site, pathologist George Hitchcock, questioned the developers' offer of secure carparking to berth holders as a city council officer had assured him all parks would be for public use.

Dr Hitchcock, chairman of the Tamaki Drive Protection Society, believed the $3.5 million payment to the council was a modest price for the easement across public land and said the developers stood to get the seabed for a pittance.

Although the hearings commissioners granted the project after receiving 200 opposing submissions and 90 in support, the society and another opponent withdrew appeals to the Environment Court for cost reasons.

Mr Mair refused to comment further, saying Dr Hitchcock had "had his day and lost".

Council property staff could not be reached but a city spokeswoman said earlier that the project was approved because it was in keeping with a vision for marine activities allowing public access on Tamaki Drive.