To the surprise and universal delight of Aucklanders, they have lately witnessed a downtown waterfront development that is worthy of the name. The Viaduct Harbour built for the America's Cup is a maritime neighbourhood on a human scale, as inviting to the public as it is to residents, restaurateurs, retailers and other business. The Viaduct has shown at last how the heart of Auckland can open to the sea.
How sad, therefore, that just along the street from the Viaduct the owners of a prime site should plan to put up another concrete and glass monstrosity that would dominate the city's waterfront face. Aucklanders and visitors know the site well. Until very recently it contained the downtown air terminal and the convention centre long known as Trillos.
In their place a 34-storey office tower will rise if the AMP Society has its way. It will dwarf the highrise nearby, exceeding the district's designated height restriction by eight floors. And it already has the Auckland City Council's approval - given by a subcommittee of two.
It is staggering that a development of such impact can be permitted with no reference to the public, or even to the full council. The application was considered to meet the council's conditions for exceeding the height restriction because the plan provides for some public space. On two floors of the podium at the base of the tower, the public will have access to a glassed-in retail area looking out to Quay St and the waterfront. Experience suggests that when public areas are provided as a concession in this way, the results are seldom inviting.
In any case, the concerns raised by this building are much greater than questions of public use. Highrise construction has a visual impact far beyond the shadows and wind tunnels caused in the vicinity. A tower of the scale proposed will alter the skyline for everybody and ought to be open to the widest scrutiny. When it is also presenting a face to the harbour, it should have to satisfy particular tests of suitability. The proposal for the corner of Lower Albert St and Quay St is a three-sided edifice which looks distinctly ugly in artists' depictions.
A monumentally cold, Stalinist structure looks about as ill-suited to the Auckland waterfront as anything could be. The project has already destroyed a pleasant and lively corner that was a valuable part of the popular concourse that Quay St West has become. If the tower block goes ahead, city planners must at the very least ensure that it provides street-level amenities as appealing as those now gone. A glazed-roof plaza, landscaped and furnished with footpath canopies, sounds promising. But designed as an afterthought it could be no better than the plaza of the adjoining building where only desperate smokers linger.
Only immediate neighbours of the proposed building had to be consulted under the procedure by which the city council considered the application. The city's senior architect-planner disagreed with that procedure. He felt the bulk of the building and its "abrupt and aggressive stance" would have a profound effect on development on the harbour edge. More senior planners, however, advised the council that only the overheight tip of the tower need be considered and a subcommittee of two was evidently suitable for that.
It seems an extraordinary way to go about considering something of this magnitude. A rival property developer, Andrew Krukziener, has applied for a High Court review of the city council's handling of the matter and has been granted a hearing in August. In the meantime, the developer and the council ought to wonder whether their ultimate interest might not be best served by submitting their plans to public opinion anyway. And the council should now devise a better set of building guidelines for the harbour edge. If the Britomart fiasco has taught the council anything, it is surely that when it comes to the waterfront, Auckland cares.
<i>Editorial:</i> Please, not another glass monstrosity
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