Greg McKeown: Let's reclaim waterfront for the public

Greg McKeown

Great waterfronts can be found throughout the world. Auckland could have one.

Our councils and the Ports of Auckland are working, notably not totally together, to adopt a waterfront vision and strategy next month. Many stakeholders have described the draft vision as weak and the consultation bland.

Politicians and officials may argue that their high-level vision describing a world-class, economically successful waterfront is okay, but Heart of the City does not buy into that.

An uninspired and uninspiring vision leaves people limp, bureaucrats and planners with no clear direction, and politicians with plenty of room for excuses later.

If we accept average outcomes and work on the waterfront now, we'll be kicking ourselves later.

Consider what has happened to the old railyards, all part of the 1989 waterfront strategy. How have we ended up with such an ugly cluster of fast-food outlets and tyre and muffler shops on Quay St, apartment sprawl, and a last-gasp attempt to cram an arena into a remaining corner?

Auckland has been a world champion of sprawl, ineffective planning and death-by-subcommittee processes. Now is not the time for more.

The Ports of Auckland is an important servant to the economy of the Auckland region, but is not the economy as such. We want to see capacity built on and near the waterfront in sectors other than cargo transport, including tourism, cruise, marine, fishing, retailing, business, entertainment, and hotel and hospitality.

The key concept is that our thinking should not be limited by the geometry of the wharves; that large infrastructure should be plugged in early; and that the Ports of Auckland is contained in the east, while the city grows in the centre and west.

The Ports of Auckland have already started reclaiming more than 9ha for cargo at the eastern end of the city-centre waterfront. Given that, and the infrastructure designed to support the port - including rail, the Grafton Gully motorway extension, and the deepening of channels in the Waitemata - we support the Ports retaining their position at the eastern end of the city-centre waterfront.

But that's the extent of it. The crux of the matter in the centre of town is that Ports of Auckland should move its banana and car-importing activities off Queens and Captain Cook wharves sooner rather than later, so we can use the space to build more public open spaces and a broader-based economy.

Queens and Captain Cook wharves could be reshaped to form a new town basin, Exhibition Harbour, accommodating an architecturally stunning facility for galleries, exhibitions or conferences, a generous green park, facilities for large cruise ships, and, importantly, an increased number of berths for commuter ferries.

This would support the region's $200 million public investment in Britomart, the city's investment in the arena, and help to create density in the central-city core.

There is some background to Breaker Island. In the past three years more than $1 million of public money has been spent developing a plan for Wynyard Pt. Suggestions included a canal, and converting the contaminated tank farm into a park. Canal detractors pointed to the direct expenses and of the idea, and we tend to agree if a better alternative can be found.

Breaker Island would provide new green open spaces with walkways and separate cycling facilities on land that had never been contaminated. It would be an early public investment in open space - a new regional park that would encourage quality development on Wynyard Pt and anchor a necklace of public open spaces on the central-city waterfront.

It would also provide calmer passage for small boats between Viaduct Harbour and Westhaven, more sheltered anchorage for the fishing fleet, and new land and water-based recreational opportunities. And to some degree it would be self-funding, given the additional Wynyard Pt land released for development.

If the Ports of Auckland can reclaim land for cargo movement in the east, why don't we do the same for the people in the west?

Te Waka has been inspired in part by a video presentation of the same name that shows at the National Maritime Museum. It involves the museum being extended, in partnership with Te Papa, to create a shape symbolic of a migration canoe. Programmes would be extended significantly to include culture and heritage story-telling, performances and more activities of interest to visitors.

The schematic also shows the fishing industry supported with land and berths at the water's edge, and, on the western side of the point, an area suitably zoned for the marine industry. Plan changes expected in the middle of next year must take into account the importance of retaining these industries in the area and at the water's edge, not only for the economy but also to help create diversity in the types of development that occur.

Given that something like Breaker Island had occurred, the central core of Wynyard Pt and its northern and southern points should be developed with reasonable density, but on the basis that it does not compete directly with commercial space in the city centre.

The notion of the marine events centre combined with public open space has merit, but it would be helpful to see the idea fleshed out a bit more before we're asked to sign up to it as part of the vision.

Running possibly at odds with the thrust of great waterfront and city building, Transit has done a harbour crossing study and flagged the option of a motorway on-off ramp on Wynyard Pt.

The diagram shows an alternative, a rapid transit line to the North Shore, complemented by a local extension of the hybrid electric bus city circuit concept, which would provide a connection to the city centre.

Auckland City and Auckland Regional Council officers are now reporting back in order to meet the timeline of an agreed final vision next month.

But meeting that timeline is not the purpose. The whole purpose of the exercise is to create a waterfront that people want to live by, work by, and, most importantly, visit - a people's waterfront.

* Greg McKeown was engaged by inner-city business association Heart of the City to talk to urban designers, architects, tourism groups, the cruise industry, developers, the marine industry and others as a means of sparking debate on waterfront planning.