KEY POINTS:
I knew nothing of the Tank Farm until I ran the Auckland Marathon last year. The Tank Farm was about 20km into the marathon and, as I weaved my way through the industrial area stepping carefully over the carcasses dotted at intervals along the roadside, I thought how much more inspirational it would be to be running around an inner-city waterfront like Wellington's.
Full of cafes, and parks, and green spaces, and fabulously restored old buildings. It was only a fleeting thought before the more pressing question of how the hell I was going to keep putting one foot in front of the other for another 20kms took over and consumed me, but I know I'm not the only one thinking the Tank Farm area is a fabulous resource that has been utterly wasted.
Now, finally, the Auckland city and regional councils have stopped their squabbling and have agreed to develop it into an area Aucklanders can be proud of.
And an area Aucklanders can profit from too, no doubt, because private enterprise is being asked to come to the party to the tune of many billions of dollars for the commercial area of the development.
If you're in your dotage, and this development is something you've always dreamed of, and you picture yourself seeing out your final years sitting on a park bench, warming your bones, enjoying the sight of Aucklanders at play in a 4ha park that will no doubt be the jewel in the crown of this development, you better start taking your powdered deer velvet and hope that you live to a ripe old age. The timeline for the project is set at 20-25 years but, as with all these things, if were strolling through the park in 50 years, we'll be doing well.
And you know and I know that the public bill, funded through rates and estimated at $250 million, will end up being a whole lot more than that. Still, it's a risk worth taking.
The details are still sketchy but I like the idea of a bridge linking the Viaduct to the farm. The two-and-a-half kilometres of public access to the waterfront is also brilliant as is the 4ha park. There are some gorgeous parks in Auckland and they are well patronised.
I'm still discovering many of them - Waiatarua Reserve over in Meadowbank (or Remuera East as residents might prefer to call the suburb) is a stunner; Meola Reef is a godsend for dog walkers, the historic Western Park edging on to Ponsonby Rd is an oasis of green in the heart of the city, and even soggy old Seddon Fields and Grey Lynn Park are vital to the many and varied sporting groups which make the most of them.
Despite the doomsayers predicting that we're going to become a nation of indoors people; pallid, pink-eyed individuals whose only source of light will come from the tube of a computer screen, there are thousands of people making the most of living in a city with open spaces available for all.
Ideally, of course, the park will be a place where thousands of Aucklanders can go to welcome home Team New Zealand after yet another glorious day on the water. With the deadline for this column, I have no idea as I write whether the America's Cup is once again New Zealand's Cup, to quote the voice of yachting, Peter Montgomery.
But I have no doubt that one day, certainly in the lifetime of our kids, we'll see America's Cup racing back in the City of Sails once again. And won't we have something to show our guests this time around. A great city is judged by its open spaces as well as its architecture - and its people's daring and vision.
