KEY POINTS:
When the Maori warrior statue was returned to Queen Elizabeth Square after the completion of the Britomart station upgrade it was installed at ground level, not on the plinth it had occupied since the 1960s.
Sculptor Molly Macalister "wanted the public to be able to touch the statue and that can happen now that it's at ground level", said Auckland City's heritage manager, George Farrant.
In a few weeks, we'll be able to take coffee with him as well courtesy of the permanent coffee out-house being built in this increasingly cluttered down-town corner.
Bringing the warrior down off his pedestal was a good move. But turning him into a coffee shop mascot risks taking the familiarity a step too far. Still, it's about what we've come to expect in this blighted corner of the city.
What with the stunted kauri gravel pit, the sputtering mock-volcano and the belching buses, it's fast becoming downtown Auckland's servants entrance rather than the grand gateway of the city publicists.
Walking around it yesterday, I felt a certain relief that at least Michio Ihara's grand Wind Tree sculpture had been removed for safe keeping in August 2002.
Relief and curiosity about its fate. Back then we were promised a new home had "high priority".
Sculptor Greer Twiss and lawyer Michael Weir, acting on behalf of the American sculptor, proposed the Western Springs lake. It provided the reflecting pool and open space that Ihara had wanted, and removed the work from drunks and vandals.
Unfortunately the Ngati Whatua o Orakei heritage adviser, Ngarimu Blair, scared council officials off with a request that Maori art works be sited there first.
Council officials muttered about siting the work sometime in the never never on future parkland to the west of the Viaduct Harbour and packed the sculpture off in pieces to the city's Onehunga depot.
In June 2005, the Waiheke Community Board made something of a pre-emptive strike for it, but nothing came of that. Then a few months later the Western Springs site was revisited.
Senior arts planner Warren Pringle reported that various sites had been looked at and variously rejected for fear of vandalism, iwi objections, or, in the case of Albert Park, because it was "full".
The two possibilities were the northern tip of the the tank farm redevelopment and Western Springs. He noted that as Western Springs was identified under the district plan as a Maori heritage site, the written consent of Ngati Whatua would be required. After that the trail seems to go cold.
When I inquired yesterday, the word was that Western Springs was still being investigated. A statement said: "We are assessing the work required to repair the sculpture, consulting with iwi, gauging the budget needed for the restoration, repair and installation of the sculpture, and completing a technical environmental study (which includes topographical and geotech surveys).
"The timeframe for this investigative work to be complete is two months."
In his 2005 report, Mr Pringle estimated reinstallation and conservation costing $100,000.
In 1971, remarkably enlightened city councillors celebrated the city's centennial by commissioning sculptures from five international artists. Four of the five survive _ that's if you include languishing in a packing case as survival.
Ihara, a French-born American, blew his tight budget, the work doubling in price to $87,500, forcing both the city council and the Auckland Harbour Board to make up the difference. It also took six years to finish _ about the same amount of time it has now languished in its Onehunga prison.
I wasn't sad to see it go from it's original site. It needed light and openness, instead of imprisonment in its concrete and glass setting.
It didn't belong there, just as Fred Graham's newly installed stylised waka sternpost, 7m high, is lost at the bottom of Swanson St.
Excuse the digression.
Michio Ihara has works in New Tokyo City Hall, the Rockefeller Center, New York, AT&T headquarters, Atlanta, and dozens of other sites. His website michioihara.com lists, with illustrations, his works dating back to 1956.
Embarrassingly, under 1977 Plaza Sculpture, Auckland, is the grim note "demolished in 2002".
How long before we can write to him and tell him he can add, "resurrected 200?".
