Rudman's city: Mocked idea to flood square proves a winner after all

By BRIAN RUDMAN

Prophets are never recognised in their own time. So in 1993 when Waitakere Mayor Bob Harvey suggested flooding Aotea Square to make it more attractive, he came in for a fair bit of stick.

Ross Johns, a fellow Aotea Centre board member, suggested tossing in a few piranhas to make it even more lively.

Engineers agonised over whether the added weight would collapse the car park underneath. The city's urban designers said it would sacrifice an area designed as "a democratic assembly space."

And that was that. The bleak, sunken expanse became a skateboard arena.

That was until Sunday when it was temporarily flooded in preparation for a concert called "The Launching," which begins a three-day season tonight, giving Aucklanders, we are told, a taste of what Auckland Festival 2003 will be like.

We'll have to wait and see about the festival, but as far as the square is concerned, the transformation is everything Mr Harvey suggested it would be.

Admittedly you have to use your imagination. The rough edges of the black plastic pond liner are hardly a thing of beauty. Nor are the metal crowd-control barriers. But blank those out of the picture and the improvement is magical.

The area finally has a focus, linking the surrounding buildings and remaining open spaces in a way that the ugly paved pit does not.

During the day, human paddlers might have been frightened off, but the seagulls have made it a home from home.

At night, the reflection of lights from adjacent buildings and trees, adds to the visual impact.

The shame is, it's all strictly temporary, because the city council and The Edge management have other ideas.

Long term - and we're talking up to 20 years - the council is working with design competition winner Ted Smyth and Associates to work out a design strategy for the precinct which would, in the words of councillor David Hay, add to the excitement and vibrancy of the precinct.

Flooding the square doesn't figure in his plans. Nor does it fit those of Aotea Centre chief executive Greg Innes. Not on a permanent basis anyway.

His organisation now controls the square and has big plans to make it not just a crowd-puller but also a money-spinner. Top of his projects is a market of 80 stalls, occupying the square each Friday and Saturday from the last weekend of this month.

He insists it'll be a high-class market, not a "trash and treasure" affair, and will sell everything from food and clothing to arts and craftwork.

Mr Innes is also keen to install a temporary covered ice-skating rink during winter. I have my doubts about cluttering up the open space with buildings, and perhaps a better venue for the artificial ice rink would be the Civic Theatre stage. That would avoid the cost of weatherproofing. It would also give the sorely under-used venue a bit of a workout.

Best of all, it would leave the square free to be ponded.

One look at the lake is to realise this is how it was meant to be. The Terry Stringer sculpture comes into its own. The Selwyn Muru gateway has something to frame.

Best of all, it replaces the awful sea of concrete with something altogether more natural and appealing.

For a place that calls itself the City of Sails and dwells at length about its special relationship with its adjacent harbours, Auckland has an almost perverse reluctance to incorporate water within its built environment.

An unattractive rectangle of water with geyser-like fountains in Queen Elizabeth Square is about all. From memory, the Stringer sculpture did originally ooze water. But whatever the source, it has long since dried up.

It's not as though we're short of the stuff. With the Waikato River pipeline fast approaching, we'll soon have more than we know what to do with and then some.

Well, a good starting place would be the Aotea Square skateboard arena.