Simon Wilson: The questions we’re not asking about a new Auckland stadium

The view out on to the Waitematā Harbour from inside the proposed Downtown stadium at Auckland's Quay Park. Image / Artist's impression

OPINION

A new stadium for Auckland came back into the news over summer, along with a new proposal last week for test cricket that looks so good there must be something wrong with it. Which, as it turns out, there could be.

Will any of them ever be built? Who knows. Anything is possible in politics, and even in sport, and it doesn’t hurt to be optimistic. Doesn’t hurt to be clear-sighted, either.

Personally, I’d love to see a new sports and entertainment stadium on or near the waterfront. I’d love to see a beautiful venue for the return of test cricket to the city, too. The existing official plan, to develop Colin Maiden Park near Glen Innes, is stupid beyond measure.

If they’re done well, the city will be vastly the better for having new, purpose-built venues in the right place – not just for sport, but economically, culturally and socially.

The debate arises now because a council advisory group is currently looking at three proposals for a new stadium and one for the redevelopment of Eden Park.

One option proposes a stadium on Wynyard Point, site of the old Tank Farm. Another is the sunken stadium proposal from 2018, next to Bledisloe Wharf. The third, known as Te Tōangaroa, is a stadium on underused land west of Spark Arena, in and around Quay Park.

The cricket proposal comes from the group behind the Wynyard plan. They want to build a test venue on Victoria Park, with a grandstand at the west end, right by the overhead motorway, with more seating around two sides and an embankment at the city end.

So many questions. Right now, I have seven.

1. Who’s going to pay?

You’d have to be living under a rock on Mars not to know that neither the Government nor Auckland Council has a red cent to spare for new stadiums.

But all five proposals include an “expectation” of public money to cover at least some of the cost.

End of story, guys. I’m all for roses as well as bread, culture and sport as well as hospitals and transport infrastructure, but are you really going to argue that now’s a good time to push a billion-dollar-plus stadium to the top of the public-spending list?

Simple fact: If you can’t work out a way to finance the thing privately, it ain’t gonna happen.

2. Will test cricket fit into Victoria Park?

Journalist Dylan Cleaver revealed the cricket plan in his excellent online newsletter, The Bounce. The renders show the project fitting snugly inside the avenues of plane trees that surround the park. It looks fantastic.

Victoria Park cricket proposal. Photo / Supplied

But it also doesn’t look quite right. The trees are sparsely foliaged versions of the magnificent specimens in the park now, with their sprawling, wildly erratic branches.

They were planted in 1905, those trees, and in my view they’ve grown to be national treasures. A big part of the pleasure is being able to walk and sit under them, especially along the wonderful colonnade on the southern side.

Magnificent, even in the rain: the colonnade of plane trees with their great branches sprawling above the walkway on the southern side of Victoria Park. Photo / Greg Bowker

The diminishing of the trees is a clue to the real problem. The plan diminishes everything.

Take Hagley Park in Christchurch, the scene of yesterday’s bitter disappointment, where the playing field is round and measures 146 metres across.

The Basin Reserve in Wellington is slightly larger, at 152m. Seddon Park in Hamilton is one of the country’s smallest test venues - the playing field is 134m across.

The width of the existing playing fields on Victoria Park is about 140m, treeline to treeline. But the renders for the new plan show seating and a grassy walkway taking up some of this space. The proposed new field does not seem much bigger than 100m across.

That would give Victoria Park boundaries of 50m to 60m. Eden Park’s much-ridiculed “smallest boundary in the world” is 55m.

Victoria Park cricket proposal.

I arranged for these calculations to be forwarded to Richard Dellabarca of the Wynyard group and asked that he call me if they were wrong. He has not called.

Update: Richard Dellabarca has advised the proposal is “ICC test field compliant (128m x 137.16m) + 2.74m boundaries”. This means the shortest diameter across the pitch would be 128m, creating a boundary of 64m. It also suggests the renders are not entirely to scale.

That 64m is longer than the short boundary at Eden Park. But the field would still be smaller than Sedden Park, Hagley Park or the Basin Reserve.

It could be a lot of fun, test cricket on a small field. But that has to be the deal.

If this plan gets a green light and later on they reveal they have to prune the trees so savagely they might as well chop them down, that would be a terrible outcome.

Dellabarca has assured me there is “no anticipation or need to cut back the trees, indeed the trees form part of the beauty of the site”. That’s very good to know.

3. What does Ngāti Whātua think?

Back to the four main stadium proposals. None of them has the explicit blessing of Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei, who are mana whenua for that part of the city. This is peculiar, especially in relation to the plan to use land on and around Quay Park, near Spark Arena.

That plan includes proposals for the wholesale invigoration of the precinct that surrounds it, with hotels, hospitality, commercial and residential developments. Most of this would happen on Ngāti Whātua land.

This suggests the iwi is deeply involved in the project, but Ngarimu Blair from Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei has told me the iwi has had “zero involvement” in this or any of the other projects. He says the iwi is not interested in “wasting any of our time” unless there is “confirmed financing and funding”.

An artist's impression of the proposed Downtown stadium at Quay Park, flanked by All Blacks hotel.

As for Dellabarca and his Wynyard Point plan, he told the Herald the first job was to work with stakeholders, including mana whenua.

This is true, and iwi will say the same. But the consortium shouldn’t be too shocked when iwi also tell them that it’s a bit late for “first thing”. They’ve already drawn up their plan.

At issue here is the repurposing of public land, which has Te Tiriti implications. Ngāti Whātua may be getting just a little tired of being treated as a box-ticking exercise, rather than a potential partner

4. Will transport planning get the attention it deserves?

According to one report, there was “carnage” at Kingsland Railway Station on Friday night after the Pink concert at Eden Park, a result of too many people waiting for a train.

I went and had a look the next day and I can report there was definitely no blood on the tracks.

Auckland Transport successfully shifts around 25,000 people out of Eden Park, all at once, several times a year. Perhaps the wait was longer than usual after Pink. Mostly, though, in my experience, AT does the job in a prevailing spirit of patience, efficiency and good cheer. Even if, sometimes, someone starts yelling “carnage!”

Still, Kingsland is not ideal. The train station has no capacity to stack up a bunch of trains ready to go one after the other. And it’s not an interchange, able to channel passengers on to several different routes.

Stadiums should be near genuine transport hubs. The sunken stadium at Bledisloe has the advantage here, being right next to the railway, bus and ferry services at the bottom of Queen St.

Artist's impression of the Auckland Waterfront Stadium sunken stadium proposed in 2018. Photo / File

There are obvious problems with that proposal, though: It looks like an engineering nightmare and a climate­-change absurdity. But those problems are so obvious, I assume the proponents have already worked out how to overcome them, or their plan wouldn’t still be on the table.

I look forward to hearing how they did it. The detail of all these plans should become public in April, when the working group reports to Auckland Council.

Te Tōangaroa, further east, is a 15-20 minute walk away from Britomart. Wynyard Point is about the same in the other direction.

Aerial images of the proposed stadium on Wynyard Point.

The key point here is that a good stadium plan requires a good transport plan, and should not be approved until it has one.

5. What kind of public building on the waterfront will draw the crowds?

Around the world, the buildings with the biggest drawing power, week after week and in every season, are not sports facilities. They’re museums.

This is true in New Zealand too, as Wellington knows from Te Papa and provincial cities including Napier, Whangārei, Whanganui and New Plymouth know from their own new museums and galleries.

If Auckland is looking for a showcase venue that drives economic activity throughout the city, it should build a Museum of the Sea, celebrating the technological, cultural and environmental wonders of everything and everyone from Kupe to the America’s Cup and beyond, and the site should be on the waterfront.

This is not a new idea. But it’s always been a very good one.

The LegendNZ Centre is a proposed multimedia museum and exhibition centre for the northern end of Wynyard Point. Image / Archimedia

6. What about the other plans for the area?

While council and vested sports interests fret about a stadium, let’s not forget there are other plans for the waterfront. Last year Mayor Wayne Brown proposed a recreational area on or near Bledisloe Wharf.

You might think its hero feature – an open-air saltwater swimming pool – is frivolous or you might think it’s inspired, but the underlying idea is extremely sound.

A seawater pool and wetland areas featured in Mayor Wayne Brown's proposals for the Auckland waterfront last year.. Image / Nick McKay, Eke Panuku

There are 40,000 people living in the central city and the commercial heart of the city is fast reorienting itself along the waterfront. A substantial recreational amenity, with parkland and walkways, perhaps a beach and lagoon, and yes, perhaps a pool, is exactly what that area needs.

And it could be cost neutral to the city, with some commercial development of the precinct levied to pay for it.

Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei has proposed a grander version of port land redevelopment, and so has another private consortium. Both make a lot of sense.

Meanwhile, council agency Eke Panuku has an inspired plan waiting for approval for the Wynyard Point area, known as Te Ara Tukutuku. And the council itself is currently consulting on plans to lease the port operation.

Visualisation of Te Ara Tukutuku, Eke Panuku's proposal for Wynyard Point.

You don’t need a grand “masterplan” before any development is possible. Seizing the moment to make something happen is often the right thing to do, and the plans fold in around it later.

But it seems improbable that the council might be moving towards some kind of decision on a stadium, without acknowledging in any way that other ambitions and other planning already exist.

7. Who’s going to make it happen?

The Sydney Opera House got built because a small number of politicians were prepared to risk, and sometimes ruin, their careers to make it happen.

Nothing big like this gets done unless there is a fearless, smart, popular and in-it-for-the-long-haul political champion to drive it. Who’s that, in Auckland?

I know, right? That gentle swishing sound you hear is every single Auckland politician, in Parliament and at the council, quietly leaving the room.

This story has been updated with information from Richard Dellabarca and from Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei’s Ngarimu Blair.

Simon Wilson is an award-winning senior writer covering politics, the climate crisis, transport, housing, urban design and social issues, with a focus on Auckland. He joined the Herald in 2018.