KEY POINTS:
As an Aucklander I have a soft spot for the Port of Tauranga. Some of this warmth comes from the dividend it regularly sends for my tiny shareholding, but not most.
The company also sends annual reports illustrated by photos of port industry that hardly seems to touch the Bay of Plenty landscape. The words are interesting, too. A sample from their latest: "It is pleasing to see continued strong growth of 6 per cent in oil product imports. This sector is expected to grow further as businesses move off Wynyard Wharf in Auckland."
See why I love them? Read on.
"Marstel Terminals have commenced construction on a $15 million bulk liquids terminal on Port land and have indicated that Tauranga will be their location for future growth. We see further opportunities with possible bitumen import consolidation and also in the emerging biofuels market in New Zealand."
Further inside there is a shot of circular constructions of concrete reinforcing, the foundations of a tank farm at Tauranga, which will be hidden amid industry on the Mount side of Tauranga Harbour.
This news reached me a day or two after last weekend's seafood festival at the Auckland waterfront, or what passes for a waterfront west of the Viaduct.
Wander past the America's Cup barns and you are in a wasteland of parking lots, hidden wharves and corrugated iron sheds around the fish market building that one day will be the hub of a wider public waterfront. One day.
The Auckland Regional Council now owns this real estate, having bought total ownership of Ports of Auckland, and Auckland City Council is the planning authority. Together the City and the ARC's commercial property subsidiary, Auckland Regional Holdings, have developed a plan for the area's redevelopment. It was on display last weekend not far from the shrimp kebabs.
The councils call their drawing Vision 2040 and it is not bad - plenty of maritime activity amid apartments, parks and public spaces. It is the 2040 that disappoints me.
It will be 25 years before the tanks' lease runs out on the western reclamation and 2040 before that prominent point may be available for the architectural inspiration it demands.
In the meantime they intend to open up Halsey Wharf and Jellicoe St where the fishing boats tie up at present behind an iron fence. That would make the outlook from the fish market cafes more pleasant but the vista will still be dominated by the wall of white tanks that testify to the old Harbour Board's commercial blinkers.
There is nothing wrong with a pure commercial focus if another powerful body can impose the public interest when necessary. Once the two functions are fused, as they have been with the ARC's needless buy-out of minorities in Ports of Auckland, the public interest becomes confused.
The council set up a subsidiary holding company that was supposed to keep the business at arm's length from politics. Business has to be capable of rapid responses to opportunities. Politics responds to public opinion, which is usually unnerved by change. Some time ago Ports of Auckland proposed a merger with the Port of Tauranga, exactly the sort of rationalisation that was supposed to happen when ports were partially floated on the sharemarket.
Tauranga was keen until suddenly, for reasons not explained, Auckland Regional Holdings stepped in to block it. The reasons were finally flushed out of chairwoman Judith Bassett by the business press this week. She said Regional Holdings was offered too small a share of the merged entity. Tauranga chairman John Parker replied that ownership had not been discussed before Mrs Bassett's board shut the proposal down.
The Tank Farm might not figure in the commercial calculations but how soon could a powerful public body get it moved, I wonder, if the ports were to become a single company?
There need then be no commercial opposition to shifting them well before their lease expires. After all, the bulk storage company is already building in the Bay.
The ARC appoints Mrs Bassett's board. The best I can do is look hard at the voting papers this weekend and try to find candidates for the ARC who might make things happen before I croak.
