Editorial: Tank farm giving way to an America's Cup legacy

Editorial

EDITORIAL:

Auckland's inner city is undergoing a major makeover with the number of construction projects featured in the Herald this week. We have saved the best until last. The best element of Auckland is its sea and focus of all the best parts of Auckland is the waterfront. The developments on the western waterfront for the 2021 America's Cup look capable of leaving a legacy as lively as the Viaduct Harbour built for Team New Zealand's previous tenure of the Cup.

The Tank Farm is already making way for syndicate bases, some of the unsightly silos have been removed and more will go unless the Auckland Council decides they are not an eyesore after all, and paints them as additions to "Silo Park".

Perhaps the best news from the Wynyard Quarter today is that the extension to challenger of record, Luna Rosa, has engaged a notable architect to design a boathouse for its base on an extended Hobson Wharf. Renzo Piano designed The Shard in London and the Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris. So it is exciting to wonder what he might draw for Luna Rosa's syndicate chief Patrizio Bertelli on the Waitematā.

Whatever he designs, the syndicate will leave it here. It is just a pity it will be on Hobson Wharf rather than the much more prominent Wynyard Point which cries out for an architectural feature of Sydney Opera House standard.

Mayor Phil Goff in our feature today envisages Wynyard Point as an extension of the pleasant public spaces on North Wharf, with open space where the syndicate bases have been and a headland park at the end.

"Kids will play in the park, there'll be sculptures," he said.

He forgets perhaps that wharves are exposed, windy places, not such pleasant places to be. The further they protrude into the harbour the less inviting they tend to be, as Queens Wharf has proved.

They need a public building but there is plenty of time for that. To get public access to the area will be legacy enough from this America's Cup, which might need it well beyond 2021 with any luck. This has been a nervous week for the project with talk of withdrawals. Only seven syndicate bases are being provided and it is sounding like they might need one fewer.

But as Auckland well knows, the event has a way of eclipsing all such concerns once it starts. Emirates Team NZ will command attention no matter how many challengers turn up. The defenders are already turning the Viaduct Events Centre into their own base. Somewhere inside their foiling monohull is taking shape.

Teams were not allowed to launch their first race boats before the end of March. Any day now we might see them. Meanwhile, some of the sailors have been looking at simulations of how the AC75s will perform. They can already tell the monohulls will be much less stable than the flying catamarans at San Francisco and Bermuda.

Less than two years from now, will Auckland be ready? The Central Rail Link will still be under construction in Albert St, no doubt causing continuing stress on the scale that owners of business in the street are describing to us today.

But SkyCity's international convention centre, already overdue for completion, should be open and drawing big conferences and exhibitions to the city. The Commercial Bay tower in Quay St is expected to be open by the end of September and the Newmarket Westfield mall should be functioning by the end of this year.

The city has been a construction site for several years but it will have a new sparkle when it gathers around a redeveloped waterfront to keep the America's Cup.