KEY POINTS:
Auckland's historic building taniwha hasn't had a good feed since it devoured the Jean Batten Building. But with Auckland City Council's heritage police the only thing between it and a good meal, it's never going to go hungry.
Indeed, short of a miracle, it will be supping at
Green Lane Hospital any day. Over the holiday break, at the behest of the Auckland District Health Board, the city authorities held a summary trial and condemned to death the landmark, century-old, Building 5. Why? So the doctors can fulfil a "master plan" to replace it with an asphalt carpark.
When public officials continue ripping our heritage down, you start to wonder whether anything old is safe in this frontier town.
The present saga is like a lost chapter from Alice in Wonderland. On the ACC website under Heritage is a potted history of the building they've just condemned. Crazily, it's not in the obituaries, but in a section bragging about how it's about to be added to the list of protected buildings.
We learn it was opened in December 1907, was the second big building at the hospital after the 1890 Costley Block and that Mayor Arthur Myers presented palms and ferns to beautify the ward. It records a second storey was added in 1915.
This is the building which, on January 5 last year, the city granted the ADHB permission to bowl. Then three weeks later, the bureaucrats changed their minds and notified an intention to list it as a Category B scheduled building. Undeterred by this turn of events, the doctors marched off to the Environment Court claiming existing use rights to continue with their destruction.
Judge Newhook's decision came straight out of the Merchant of Venice.
Noting that the neighbouring Costley Block was already protected, with a 30m area surrounding it, he declared the doctors could have their pound of flesh, but not a drop of blood more. They could demolish the 52 per cent of Building 5 that lay outside the 30m protected zone but not the 48 per cent within. Not without a full hearing.
Instead of grabbing this lifeline, the city's heritage staff, to the anger of the Historic Places Trust and others, tossed in the towel and withdraw their recommendation that Building 5 be scheduled. They did this by massaging their much criticised scoring system enough to change a pass grade into a fail.
A building needs a score of 50 or more to win the right of protection. On January 15 last year, Building 5 was evaluated as a 53 by the heritage team. But seven months later, with the hospital authorities jumping up and down, it was suddenly downgraded to a 49. Why? Anything built before 1916 starts scoring points for age. The ground floor was built in 1907, but the date of the second storey addition varies.
The first assessment says it was added in 1915 and scored it two points for longevity. But second time round, the score sheet notes "it appears to have been completed in 1917". As a result, no points.
The Historic Places Trust "cannot understand why a two-year difference in the date for the completion of the second storey can have such an impact on its score", and nor can I.
Surely it's a 1907 building. That's when it first went up.
As for 1915 or 1917, how anal can you get?
The reasoning around the other two lost points is equally risible. Under "services" in the first assessment it scored two points because "services are reasonable for existing use". But in the recount, it dropped a point because "some service upgrade required which could be done without major difficulties".
The same subjective nonsense occurred in the "alterations" category. First time round it "appears very intact since 1915" and scored two but in the recount it lost a point because it was only "reasonably intact since 1917".
Having downgraded it to a failed 49, the heritage team recommended it be withdrawn as a prospective scheduled building, in effect surrendering it to the white-coated wreckers.
Unless an appeal is lodged by Thursday, the vandals will have won again and the taniwha dines again.
Have the health board and city council no sense of shame?