Brian Rudman: Filling the gaps in the history of Auckland's infill mentality

Have bulldozer, will shift dirt. I guess it's part of the human condition to level mountains and fill in picturesque bays, if you can. It's certainly been the case with the Auckland foreshore where we've been at it since the first pick and shovel was unloaded back in the mid-1800s.

Our obsession hasn't gone unnoticed. In 1969, the Minister of Lands and Forests, Duncan MacIntyre, warned that if we continued our headlong rush to develop and expand, nothing would be left of the Waitemata Harbour in 100 years but a system of canals leading ships up to the docks.

At the time, a bill was before Parliament seeking to develop a 100ha "marine suburb" on the mudflats of Devonport's Ngataringa Bay. Compared with that ill-fated project - and many others that also sank without trace - the present proposals for Wynyard Point seem modest. And, hopefully, as disposable.

Of course the grand-daddy of all the in-fill proposals was the scheme to reclaim 400ha of seabed between Pt Chevalier and Te Atatu Peninsula and build a vast new port with an oil refinery alongside. Legislation was passed in 1949 vesting 2700ha of adjacent seabed in the harbour board. This was a time of long-term vision. It was called a 500-year project. Ten years later, when news broke of proposed 50,000-tonne supertankers, the general manager, A. G. Clarke, said that of course the new port would be able to handle them.

"The board planned the scheme," he told the Herald, "it should be given credit for thinking ahead about these problems."

It took several decades, but the Te Atatu folly finally disappeared into the mudflats as well.

So did building mogul Sir James Fletcher's 1955 plan to fill in Hobson Bay. He wanted to replace the 140ha basin with high-rise apartments for 50,000 people, offices, a luxury hotel, schools, hospitals and sports grounds.

The Harbour Board chairman, Mr A. G. Wilson welcomed this "great vision", while an over-excited Mayor J. H. Luxford declared people would look back "next century" and call this "the most important event in Auckland's civic history".

Even my old geography professor, Dr Kenneth Cumberland, couldn't contain his excitement, calling it "an exhilarating prospect which opens up immeasurable potentialities ... both aesthetic and economic."

This one went glug glug into the mud as well, but a couple of years later was echoed by the Harbour Board's plan to fill in neighbouring Judges Bay for an expanded railway shunting yards. Disquiet about the proposal by the Institute of Architects was denounced by acting-chairman of the board Captain A. W. Jenkyns as "near hysteria". He said: "It would seem that the interests of the farming community, freezing works ... pulp and paper manufacturers, together with all other exporters and importers, are to be sacrificed for the sake of a few people." Thankfully, those few won the day.

The architects struck back the next year with a display of historic charts and paintings at the central public library showing how "lack of planning had spoiled the Auckland waterfront's natural beauty and resources" over the previous 150 years.

With the planned resurrection of the Tank Farm, wouldn't it be great to finally start getting it right. That after all the despoliation, we were planning to give something back. Something like a big public park perhaps?

Meanwhile, hands up all those who noticed the generous Christmas present Ports of Auckland gave its new foster mum, Judith Bassett, as chair of Auckland Regional Holdings (ARH). It surfaced in yesterday's announcement of the port company's half-yearly results to December 2005, where we discover ARH, the port company's owner and a regional council subsidiary, got a special dividend of $120 million.

Which no doubt helped towards the $170 million it cost ARH to take over the port company six months before.

It's no surprise we missed the joyous news. Ports slipped a press release out at 1.50pm, Friday December 23, when any self-respecting journalist's thoughts were elsewhere. Even the ports own filing system missed it. It's not included in the electronic press release archive dating back years. But I have tracked down a copy and in it, Ports Santa Claus, chief executive Geoff Vazey says he'd been through his linen cupboard and discovered "our debt level in the past has been very conservative", or to you and me, very low. So he borrowed some more, it seems, and passed it on to his new owners.

What a shame he didn't know we'd really had our hearts set on electric trains.