Brian Rudman: At that price, Queen St will be paved with gold

With the estimated cost of the Queen St revamp jumping $3.6 million in less than a month - from $26.4 million to $30 million - you'd be forgiven for thinking the repaving was in gold.

For that sort of money, I'd be demanding a rail tunnel running underneath as well. Or at least some signs that the experts had heard my bleating about the need for adequate verandahing.

But the latest revised scheme for the upgrade of the city's main street, which goes to Auckland City's arts, culture and recreation committee today and the urban strategy and governance committee tomorrow, is little changed from the plan that went out for public consultation a month ago.

Apart from the price rise, the only other major difference is a knee-jerk response to complaints about the use of immigrant trees. "Because of the desire to better reflect Auckland's place in the world, it is proposed to change the exotic trees within Queen St from liquid amber to suitable native trees."

That there are no suitable native trees now available is brushed aside: "The management of this change [to natives] will need to be worked through with stakeholders as it may take several years to get the identified native species to the appropriate size for planting."

The good news, I guess, is that exotics will not be removed until new species are ready to be planted.

As an after-thought, we are told that "additional vegetation opportunities will be investigated".

That last sentence leaves me intrigued. If not exotic or native, what third "vegetation" alternative is there? Alien?

Perhaps the bureaucrats are harking back 50 years to then Mayor John Luxford's solution to the golden mile's "very drab" demeanour. He'd been stung into action by local Institute of Architects chairman Clifford Sanderson, who rubbished Queen St as "one of the worst-looking main streets in the world".

Mr Luxford's response was to order window-boxes. "We feel," he declared, knee-deep in pansies and petunias, "the centre of the city is bereft of horticulture."

As for the desire of today's bureaucrats for Queen St to reflect Auckland's place in the world, surely immigrant trees do exactly that. After all, a good proportion of the people using Queen St were not born here.

If you really wanted to argue this point, the doomed liquid amber is a native of Taiwan, which is where Winston Peters says his Maori ancestors came from. Surely that entitles them to some sort of tangata whenua status, once or thrice removed.

But whether or not they can claim cuzzie status, why not just select the best tree for the job, regardless of ancestry.

The planners have high hopes for planting mini-clusters of 80 mature nikau palms along Queen St. I look at the lonely existing specimen on the paving mid-town, and it seems to be saying the concrete jungle is not its home and never will be.

The Britomart kauri fiasco is proof that they don't belong either. The only obvious indigenous candidate is the cabbage tree, which has a weedlike ability to thrive in the unlikeliest of places. But neither it nor the nikau provide the shade or shelter one would expect of a working street tree.

Moving on and at the risk of repeating myself, I do hope councillors ask why, in a plan designed to encourage pedestrianism, no shelter is provided for patrons approaching the main entertainment precinct on foot. There are covered ways between the underground carpark and the Town Hall and Aotea Centre, but for those travelling by bus, or coming from a meal downtown, all they can look forward to is a long, uphill dash in the open at the mercy of Auckland's fickle weather.

If councillors can insist via the building code that new CBD buildings provide verandah cover for passing pedestrians, then surely they should set an example by retrofitting the Town Hall and the paving down to the Civic Theatre block accordingly. Claiming that it's a historic building and can't be violated doesn't wash after the extensive internal "improvements" made during its recent upgrade.

Finally, that price. Obviously bluestone doesn't come cheap - not for 20,000sq m of the stuff. But is it worth it? Or should we get out and repair the perilous footpaths in surrounding streets first?