Rudman's city: Ferry toilets stay locked while lawyers quibble

By BRIAN RUDMAN

It was just another day at the office for Sharon Wech. Mid-morning one unhappy passerby peed against her downtown ferry terminal kiosk door and encouraged his 6-year-old daughter to follow suit.

In the afternoon another caught-short passenger took his ease over the side of the wharf in full view of Cin Cin Restaurant diners. That was at 2.30 pm one day last week in civilised 21st-century Auckland.

For Mrs Wech it's nothing new. She's been putting up with these sorts of hassles since April when Phillips Fox solicitor Marcus Macdonald suddenly padlocked the doors of the busy terminal's public toilets. He was acting as a director of the overseas- registered company leasing the historic building and adjacent annexes.

Mr Macdonald said the toilets were costing too much to run so he closed them - and left it for his tenants and sub-tenants like Mrs Wech to cope with the consequences. The closed toilets are on either side of her information kiosk and she has to handle the 70-a-day queries, some of them abusive, from those in need.

The closure has not only hit ferry passengers. It has also left the coffee shop next door - tenants of Mr Macdonald's - without customer toilet facilities. Talk about landlord of the year.

When I last wrote about this farce 10 days ago it appeared likely that common sense would break out any day and the Auckland City Council would take over the lease. The rental was to be $1 a year with the city having to pay additional annual operating costs of $40,000.

On top of that, Mr Macdonald et al were demanding a contribution for upkeep on the building. The city was offering $2800 a year for upkeep and hoped the deal would be done and the toilets reopened by last week.

Today they're still padlocked as city officials and Mr Macdonald's lawyer - yes, he's retained a colleague, Williameme Sim, to do battle - quibble over words like "good" and "reasonable".

The big-city lawyer and his millionaire overseas clients are now nit-picking over the state in which they want the toilets returned to them when the city's lease on the toilets ends. In the trade it's called the reinstatement clause.

Mr Macdonald is pushing for a full reinstatement clause, giving him the right to insist on the place being repainted, and if there is a little nick on a toilet bowl, that it be replaced. Auckland City's Howard Cara wants what he says is a more normal, "fair wear and tear" clause.

"The council is willing to replace all such items as toilet bowls if they become damaged," he wrote to Mr Macdonald, "but it is an onerous obligation to require council to replace fixtures and fittings which become worn from reasonable use. This is not a customary obligation ... "

Ms Sim was having nothing of this. "Our client does not agree with this. Your client will only be paying a peppercorn licence fee. Our client requires the premises be returned in good order, repair and condition."

Reading this, you could be mistaken for thinking it was Ms Sim's client who was doing the council the big favour. That's not true. The city is offering to carry the can, if I can be excused the expression, only because of the crisis Mr Macdonald and mates have caused by walking away from the clear intentions of the September 1988 lease between the old harbour board and Challenge Properties to provide public toilets. By late on Friday afternoon, the city council was still waiting for a response.

Meanwhile, ferry passengers and tourists have to make do as best they can. Could I suggest one place that I'm sure does have super loos. That's the Phillips Fox Tower at the corner of Queen St and Victoria St. If anyone asks, you could always present your ferry ticket and say that Marcus Macdonald sent you.

* If common sense is nowhere to be seen at that end of town, it has broken out atop One Tree Hill. For a brief time anyway. My mocking of the planned dawn planting ceremony this month as a pre-election stunt seems to have saved the baby trees from early death by exposure.

The politicians had been pushing for a planting, despite expert advice that autumn was the best time for planting, not spring. The chosen seedlings were also much too small for transplantation.

On Thursday, city officials met Mayor Christine Fletcher and Ngati Whatua elder Sir Hugh Kawharu and the planting is now postponed until next autumn. Well done.