KEY POINTS:
Have Aucklanders succumbed to consultation overload concerning the grand plans for redeveloping the waterfront Tank Farm?
At lunchtime on Friday, when I checked for queues at the National Maritime Museum display centre where the plans are on show, I had the place to myself. Contrast the steady flow of people milling through the old Chief Post Office display centre six years ago offering their pennyworth about how Britomart should be redeveloped.
Auckland Regional Holdings spokesman Mark Hanson says I must have picked a bad time, because interest has been "steady". Then again, after a series of consultations dating back to at least 1989, perhaps people are exhausted.
Of course it could be that everyone thinks the new plans are perfect, which is what the authorities will naturally assume if the rest of us say nothing. With just three weeks left to make submissions to the Auckland City Council and Auckland Regional Council, consider yourself warned.
You can collect all the information you need at the Maritime Museum Wednesday to Friday, 11am to 4pm and Saturday and Sunday, 10am to 5pm, or track it down, with a little effort, on the internet.
For the overview and the artist's impressions, go to the Auckland Regional Council's www.seacity.co.nz site. For the fine print, head for the Auckland City homepage which has a link to "have your say on Wynyard Quarter plan changes". There you will find the downloadable submission form, and confusing officialese about "variation 33" and "plan change 119". But beware of the link called Auckland City projects which takes you to "Auckland's CBD waterfront". That is the outdated 2005 vision now superseded by the new model. Who said it was going to be easy?
For the 66 per cent of submitters who just a year ago objected to the proposal to allow buildings up to 16 storeys south of Jellicoe St, little has really changed. Five sites have been identified in that zone for buildings up to 52m (about 14 storeys), and much of the rest for buildings up to 31m. Even on the peninsular area, the proposed open space will have to share with blocks of 27m-high apartments.
Another issue for submissions might be the treatment of heritage buildings. Salmond Reed Architects was asked to prepare an assessment of notable character buildings and elements in the Wynyard Pt Precinct and found 17 sites worth preserving. Only eight have survived in the master plan. Among those considered not worth protecting are the Packenham St buildings occupied by North Sails and Southern Spars.
In trying to create a unique identity for this massive redevelopment, I'd have thought preserving as much of the old industrial past as possible would have been a no-brainer. The report says this rather more grandly: "Successive generations gain a sense of continuity from physical surroundings which have survived functional change ... Physical relics give substance to previous events and act as evidence of the past as well as talismans of the future."
It continues: "New Zealand's stock of old buildings represent two kinds of capital - an inherited resource of energy and investment from those who have preceded us and the cultural capital of those elements of our lives which link our present to our past and to our hopeful future. Because the structure of a building tends to last longer than its original function, there is a long tradition of adapting old buildings to new uses."
The report argues that both locals and tourists are attracted to old buildings for links to the past. It says the buildings identified are "good examples of early 20th century industrial architecture and evocative of the industrial history of the place". Unfortunately, this report is hidden in the confidential files. It should be released as part of the debate and the planners made to explain why only half the buildings deemed worthy of saving are to survive.
The popularity of The Rocks precinct in Sydney is largely because of its adaptation of old buildings. The same approach was adopted with the Britomart upgrade. Why has it been discarded at the Tank Farm?
