It used to be this beautiful: View from the stage in the historic St James Theatre, which has been given a new lease of life with council funding. Photo / Nick Reed
This is a transcript of Simon Wilson’s weekly newsletter Love this City – exploring the ideas and events, the reality and the potential of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. To sign up, click here, select Love this City and save your preferences.
Auckland councillors sometimes have funny ideas about the performing arts. In the debate on Thursday about funding to allow the St James Theatre in Queen St to reopen, Maurice Williamson wanted to know why “the arts and culture and heritage community”, which he said are “absolutely loaded with dough”, wasn’t paying for it.
It’s a pervasive idea, that one: culture is for rich people.
Another version of the same concept was presented by Josephine Bartley and Lotu Fuli, who both suggested money for the St James was money that wouldn’t go to people in deprived areas like South Auckland.
That’s another pervasive idea: South Auckland doesn’t come into the city.
Councillor Julie Fairey saw it all rather differently. The St James might be called a “theatre”, she said, but that’s not what it’s for. It’s a music venue.
James Brown played there, and so did Miles Davis and Joni Mitchell. And a long, long list of local acts. And who goes to concerts in Auckland? Same answer as for everywhere: on the whole, young people, of every demographic and from every corner of the city.
Besides, the style of the St James restoration will not be aimed at the black-tie-and-diamonds crowd. The bottom level will be fixed up, but not the two levels above that, and there’ll be some necessary strengthening work. But it’s a strictly budget operation. Fairey called it “grunge”.
Aotea Centre will still do opera, the town hall will still do classical concerts, the Civic will do the musicals, Spark Arena will still take the big touring acts and Eden Park the really big ones.
But the St James will be back in action for a whole lot of other concerts, with seating for 900 or, with the seats out, standing room for 1800.
“Concerts and comedy,” says the owner, Steve Bielby. Bring it on.
The council has committed $15 million, with a tight set of conditions to be met all through the restoration process. Another $15 million is coming from the Government, following a commitment made by the previous Government.
Heart of the City’s Viv Beck has welcomed the news. “The St James has been sorely missed since it closed its doors all those years ago. We want a flourishing city centre that is rich in culture and entertainment for all Aucklanders to enjoy. The area surrounding the St James also holds some of the biggest opportunities for renewal. The St James will play a crucial role in both.”
True that. Apart from the benefits to music, this should also fix the single biggest problem with the Queen St streetscape and help revitalise the “arts precinct” in that part of town. The St James block opposite the Civic is a boarded-up eyesore. Now, it doesn’t have to be.
The funding arrangement doesn’t explicitly allow for fixing the Queen St frontage, but Bielby, Brown and everyone else seem committed to it.
The venue is at the back of its site, fronting Lorne St opposite the central library. Queen St itself has a vacant lot, which will one day, probably, possibly, become an apartment block. That block is not included in the funding deal.
Waitematā Local Board member Allan Matson has proposed that until the tower block gets under way, the site should be converted into a park. Brilliant idea.
Mayor Wayne Brown is on board, although he told the council on Thursday he was sceptical it would succeed. The politician who patched it all together was local MP Chloe Swarbrick.
“Going for economic growth,” said Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop in Auckland last week, “means ... taking on some tough political debates that we’ve previously shied away from.”
He was talking about “viewshafts”: the legal protection for 73 views of Auckland’s volcanic cones. You can’t block the views of the maunga.
“In 2016,” Bishop said, “the Independent Hearing Panel for the Auckland Unitary Plan recommended further work on the viewshafts, including refining them to improve their efficiency and reduce opportunity costs. In the almost decade since, this work has not been progressed.”
Bishop raised the issue because the opportunity cost – what the economy loses by not building in those viewshafts – runs into the billions.
His favourite example is the view of Maungawhau/Mt Eden from a spot on the harbour bridge, just above the marina, where the toll booths used to be. While you waited, you could admire.
A study using 2014 land values reckoned keeping that single view had cost $1.4 billion in lost development opportunities in the city centre.
“We are not proposing to remove these viewshafts,” Bishop said. “Rather, we are recognising that as the city changes, there will be areas where the viewshafts should change with it.”
If the viewshaft from the toll-booth location was twisted by a mere 4.5 degrees, he said, it would unlock 43% of the lost potential.
“We are committed to trying to find a way though – alongside mana whenua – to get the balance right between economic growth and the special role these maunga play in the unique identity of Auckland.”
He said Mayor Wayne Brown had agreed to “have a good look at it”.
Back to those tough debates, Bishop said that if we didn’t confront them, “stagnation and mediocrity” would be our future and all we would be doing was “managing our decline”.
Okay, sure. So is the Government going to lead a “tough debate” on how to embed climate action in city planning? How about we have a tough debate about car dependency?
Free overnight parking will remain in central Auckland for at least another year, says Auckland Transport. “We’ve listened to feedback from our stakeholders and communities,” it says, and has decided to “allow more time to support economic recovery”.
AT also points out there are 8400 council-owned parking spaces and more than 15,000 private spaces in the central city: “more than enough for everyone who needs to drive into the city to enjoy a night out”.
Many of the council spots are in the Victoria St, Downtown and Civic parking buildings and cost only $2 an hour, capped at $10-$15 a night. And if you want to get from a show in town up to K Rd afterwards, don’t think you have to drive: the easiest way is to hop on a red CityLink bus.
And here’s something you might not know: you can park free for 10 minutes in any on-street council parking space.
Arvida Group, which builds and runs retirement villages it prefers to call “communities”, has applied for a zone change to 140ha of land near Warkworth. It wants to build a community of 210 units there, plus 2200 other homes.
Councillors this week basically told them to go jump in the sea.
The proposal includes 29ha of land classed as “highly productive” under the National Policy Statement on Highly Productive Land and “prime soil” under the Auckland Unitary Plan. Arvida was also asking for the rural-urban boundary to be moved, so it would include that prime land.
Mayor Brown said he was “firmly against” and pointed out the land in question was the size of Howick. In his view, there was no way it would be covered in houses “in the lifetime of anyone in this room”.
“This isn’t about town planning,” he said. “It’s about speculation. If they want to build a retirement village, why don’t they just apply to do that?”
Councillor Shane Henderson said, “We should send a strong message: the city cannot sprawl.” He said Watercare had a good map showing good places to build because the underground services existed. “It’s very good in the inner-city suburbs,” he said. “It isn’t in Warkworth. Every time we have this conversation we should look at that map.”
He was referring to the GIS (Geographic Information System) maps, free for anyone to study on Watercare’s website.
Councillor Chris Darby said the same applied to bus services. “There’s no public transport. And there won’t be. And if there was, the money to do it would be taken from Māngere and Manurewa. Why would we want to do that?”
No one spoke in Arvida’s defence. The vote was 17-3 against, with Deputy Mayor Desley Simpson abstaining. She didn’t explain why.
The three councillors in favour made an odd triplet: Greg Sayers, staunchly on the right; Lotu Fuli, just as staunchly on the left; and Andy Baker, a moderate centre-rightist.
Sayers and Baker represent, respectively, the rural wards of Rodney in the north and Franklin in the south. In both wards, landbanking, sprawl and the future of the rural-urban boundary are hot issues. Fuli represents Manukau.
Like Simpson, none of them explained their position.
Despite the firm vote against, councillors and officials expect Arvida to appeal to the Environment Court.
So said Chris Bishop in that speech last week. Is he right? I drive a car and I don’t hate level crossings. I’m pleased there’s a safety system in place to help prevent people killing themselves and others when the trains go through. There are several near me and none of them hold up traffic for long.
Why this gratuitous sneer at rail transport? And why encourage fury at being held up?
I know, there are parts of town where level crossings do cause bigger delays. And it will only get worse once the City Rail Link opens and the number of trains on the network grows.
So, something has to be done. That something, said Bishop, was an allocation of $200 million, for “grade separations”, which means the road will go up and over the railway. And there will be some closures.
The announcement is welcome, although it’s not exactly the breakthrough the minister seemed to think it was.
Twelve crossings on the network have already been changed or closed. The new money will allow another eight, mostly in Takanini, to be changed.
But there are 42 in all that need attention. And grade separation is not cheap. The total required will probably reach over a billion dollars and the work will be done over many years.
The annoying thing is that the need for grade-separated crossings has not just been discovered. Planners have been warning governments about it since the CRL was approved in 2016, but little has been done.
One unheralded side note: Bishop’s $200m will come from a contingency fund that had been earmarked, in part, for roads of national significance. Bit of a rethink going on there?
Public consultation opens on Friday, for a month, on Auckland Council’s new annual plan, aka the budget for the 2025-26 year. The council has identified a range of issues it wants to hear from us about, including investment plans and priorities for spending.
The biggest, though, is probably rates. Council proposes a 5.8% average residential rates increase, which equates to $224 a year or $45 a bill.
It’s a bit higher than we’ve been used to, but still way less than the double-figure rates rises of every other big city in the country.
The budget also assumes $7m will be raised with a bed tax on visitors, to be used to fund major events. But this needs a law change and, so far, the Government has declined to commit to this.
See the council website for details on how to have your say.
The Government has announced it wants to set up “regional deals” to unlock economic potential and the first of these is likely to be in Auckland.
Auckland Council has front-footed its response, albeit with what officials call a “light touch”. It has a draft plan that sets out five areas it wants to get special attention: housing, transport, innovation, Gateway to the World, which includes trade and tourism, and the natural environment, especially the harbours.
The approach it says it is taking is not to make demands or prescribe solutions, but to identify problems, seek funding and work with the Government on what to do.
One obvious area in which the two bodies are far apart: the Government is focused on those roads of national significance as the foundation of its transport policy, but they don’t feature at all in the council or the mayor’s approach to transport planning.
Much of the outcome may come down to which faces the Government puts in front of this. Simeon Brown, the RONS champion, is still Minister for Auckland. Chris Bishop is Minister of Transport, Housing and Infrastructure, and he’s more interested in transit-oriented development. But he’s also a fan of the RONS.
Negotiations on the regional deals, though, are led by Minister for Local Government Simon Watts, who is also the Minister for Climate Change.
Will they speak as one? In Wayne Brown’s view, the person who really should be the Minister for Auckland, and in charge of all this, is the Prime Minister.
“Wouldn’t that send a good signal?” he said to me last week.
I’ll do a deeper dive into the plans in a future edition of Love this City.
Councillor Mike Lee re-registered his opposition to the sale of council’s airport shares this week. “We sold a blue-chip asset and now all we’ve got is a bunch of cash.”
Quite a big bunch, as it happens. The council’s Auckland Future Fund (AFF), which managed the sale on December 4 last year, now has $1.319b in the kitty. That’s $30.65m more than was expected.
The money will be invested for the future good of the city and the AFF board is now on the lookout for an independent global investment manager. In the meantime, the money is parked in term deposits.
The fund will pay an annual dividend to the council of 5.24%. On current holdings, that’s $69m. In comparison, the dividend from the “blue-chip” airport shareholding was 1-2%. In its last full year, that meant $10.6m.
Whatever you think of its merits, the creation of the Future Fund has been a defining feature of Wayne Brown’s mayoralty.
Auckland Pride: The month-long festival comes to an end on a contemplative note on Saturday afternoon, in the underpass at the bottom of Myers Park where the major artwork known as Waimahara has been installed. With sculpture and craftwork, a sound and light show and an interactive singing station, there’s nothing like it anywhere else in the city. Or possibly anywhere at all. The Pride event will also feature performance by Nganeko and Spdrtwnbby.
Hāmiora Bailey, Auckland Pride’s executive director, says it was always important to ground the festival in the arts and to “carry cultural relevance in both te ao Māori and Takatāpuitanga and be truly generational”.
“Our closing event shifts away from the traditional Pride March and Pride Party. It reflects on the strength within our communities and galvanises our shared vision of queer liberation and social justice.”
Waimahara: Myers Park, central city, Saturday, March 1, noon-4pm.
Wooden Boat Festival: Two days of talks and tours on waka building, navigation, women at sea, history and so much more: Maritime Museum, Saturday, March 1, 10am to Sunday, March 2, 5pm
Z Manu World Champs: Finals day in the pool at Karanga Plaza, Saturday, March 1, 10am-5.30pm.
Six60: The Grassroots Tour City Edition: Base Spaces (the old Tank Farm behind Silo Park), Saturday, March 1, 4pm.
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The crash ended the man's run from police from Dominion Rd in Auckland, through Waikato.