Brian Rudman: Secret deal on park adds fizz to city council agenda

Auckland city councillors have to decide tomorrow whether to honour a secret deal signed last August by former mayor John Banks to sell Fisher Park, in Carbine Rd, Mt Wellington, to the neighbouring Coca-Cola bottling plant.

The August 30 deal - a memorandum of understanding still unseen, it seems, by most councillors - has the city council promising to help deliver up the park to Coke, in return for it pledging to desist from any further objections to Mr Banks' beloved Eastern Highway.

Earlier in the year it was revealed that the preferred highway route went through Coke's Waipuna Rd frontage.

In response, managing director George Adams threatened to fight the alignment "by all means at our disposal" if a satisfactory solution was not found. He hinted that a reconfiguration of "adjacent park assets" could be that solution.

Meetings were had, hands shaken, the memorandum signed and the criticism stopped.

Two months after the secret signing, Mr Banks and his pro-road majority were out of office, and like them, the highway was history. But so, it seems, is the small, and neglected 1.5ha pawn at the centre of the memorandum.

That's if the politicians vote tomorrow to ask the Minister of Conservation to revoke the reserve status of this park, gifted by Sir Woolf Fisher in 1962, so the land can be sold.

Council bureaucrats were furious a month ago when I first raised this connection. Public relations man Graeme Colman hot-footed it to my editor with complaints about my one-sided reportage. The property officers' report on tomorrow night's council agenda repeats the attack. I'm not surprised.

The thrust of the bureaucrats' reporting to councillors has been to paint the deal as a rationalisation of reserve holdings in Mt Wellington, rather than as being driven by Coke's desire to take over its minnow-like neighbour and the public road accessing it. The Tamaki ward's 4.1ha of open space per thousand people, "is above the citywide average of 3.8ha". That sort of thing.

In response to my earlier piece, Mr Colman's department produced a "media backgrounder".

Who got it? I don't know. It's supposed to be attached to tomorrow's agenda, but it's not there.

It certainly wasn't offered to the Herald at the time. Not surprising really, because the copy I obtained reads more like a Coca-Cola press release, with details of its $80 million expansion plans over the park.

We discover that in anticipation of obtaining the land, Coke has already applied to have the doomed reserve rezoned Business 8.

My argument a month ago has not changed. Revoking the reserve status of a park, however rundown - and whose fault is that? - should not be driven by the land-hunger of a neighbouring business.

Why set aside an open space for recreation and give it special reserve status if not to protect it for future generations from the avarice of industry?

Part of the secret deal with Coke was that it would buy a 2.9ha property two or three kilometres away as a replacement park.

Unfortunately, the unsuspecting owner of the property wasn't in on this agreement and has so far resisted any offers.

What council now proposes is that the purchase price be put in a piggy bank for future reserve developments in the area. That doesn't sound much of a deal for the current users of the park.

The only bright spot is that councillor Glenda Fryer, one of the three members of the committee which prepared tomorrow night's recommendation for revocation, voted against. The two for were Vern Walsh and Bill Christian.

Ms Fryer said they were asked to prove it is not being used as a park "and I wasn't convinced locals were not using it for recreation and walking".

If it is under-used, she points the finger at the city council, which discouraged use by letting factory workers occupy the park's off-street parking area. On-street parking alongside the park is forbidden, thanks to double-yellow lines on the public road shared with Coca-Cola.

Ms Fryer is also against removing a park in an area identified by the city for future high-density usage.

"If you're going to have high-density living, it's these little pocket parks you need."

It would be nice to think that once in a while, common sense wins out. Tomorrow night, we'll see.