Waterfront scheme is latest in string of visionary plans for Auckland

BY WARREN GAMBLE

Auckland, 1840. Governor William Hobson was handed the first plan for his New Zealand capital on the southern shores of the Waitemata Harbour.

Hobson had chosen the fern-covered site a few months earlier, attracted by its central position and "the facility and safety of its port".

Surveyor Felton Mathew's vision for the new city was full of street names familiar to a modern Aucklander running down to an unfamiliar foreshore. Point Britomart jutted into the water (later to be completely dug away for reclamation), the yet to be reclaimed Victoria Park was a mudflat bay, and the proposed Queen St ended at Fore St (now Fort St) and a pleasant-looking beach.

Mathew's first waterfront development was a proposed reclamation of the bay between Pt Stanley (where present day Albert St intersects with Customs St) and Pt Britomart.

He knew that many plans that were to follow; it was a big ask.

"In the present early stage of the Colony, and with the paucity of labour from which it is now suffering, I am aware that such works would be both impolitic and impracticable," Mathew wrote.

"But looking to this place as the Port, and the medium of communication with all parts of the Interior of this Northern Island, I anticipate that at a very early period the Government will find it desirable to carry these improvements into effect."

In fact it took another 18 years for the reclamation to begin, a time-lag familiar to latter-day developers. And when it did many of the fledgling city's citizens were appalled. Not because of environmental concern, or denial of public access, but because they feared the settlement would not grow big enough to use the extra space, and they would be left with a white elephant.

But at least Mathew's plans got off the drawing board. Many others' grand designs on Auckland's waterfront have not made it past artists' impressions.

The latest vision from the latest body to attempt a reconciliation between the city and its harbour must contend with the ghosts of visions past.

Unveiled by the Weekend Herald last week, the core of a blueprint hatched by international architects, including enthusiastic American Eric Kuhne, is, like any good vision, strikingly bold.

Its main features are extending Victoria Park across an underground section of Fanshawe St, closer to the water (the intention of Mathew's original plan), turning the long-despised Tank Farm into a training/education campus, and building Venice-like canals to link the Viaduct Basin and Westhaven marina.

The international architects, including Kuhne and Britain's Sir Peter Hall, are on a review panel set up by the Auckland Waterfront Advisory Group.

Unlike community-based groups, professional bodies and private interests which have launched visions in the past, the advisory group has a big advantage. It is made up of the big waterfront players - landowners Ports of Auckland, Viaduct Harbour Holdings and America's Cup Village Ltd, as well as Infrastructure Auckland.

Even so, as history shows, its work is cut out.

The outbreak of waterfront visions did not begin in earnest until the expansionist 1980s when Auckland City's skyline was crowded with construction cranes.

Until then the Auckland Harbour Board had gone merrily along, reclaiming land for wharves, railway yards and storage areas, gradually putting hundreds of hectares of industrial space between the city and the sea.

In the early days the wharves had been open to a curious public welcoming the long-haul sailing ships, but increasing customs controls gradually limited access to all but the busy ferry building. The rest of the waterfront was divided off by wrought iron railings.

There seemed little public push for wider access because the Auckland isthmus offered hundreds of recreational beaches.

And the cafe culture was decades away.

The only downtown waterfront projects were more reclamations and more wharves, but grander visions were directed to other areas of the foreshore.

In 1955 the Auckland Harbour Board backed a huge reclamation of Hobson Bay proposed by Sir James Fletcher and his construction company. Its plans included offices, housing for up to 50,000 people, a large tourist hotel, schools, hospitals, parks, a shopping plaza and even a site for the 1960 World Fair.

Vocal Remuera residents, objecting to the "despoiling of the loveliest suburb in the world", helped scuttle the plans.

One of the longest-running proposals which never made it past the planning stage was the harbour board's second port at Pollen Island, Te Atatu, including a large oil refinery.

At one stage in 1966 the board unveiled plans for a 162ha waterfront development at Te Atatu, including housing, a community centre, "attractive" light industry and oil tanks.

Another long-running no-show was the 1960s revival of a century-old plan to build a barge canal between the Waitemata and Manukau Harbours. The path of the proposed canal followed the Otahuhu Creek on the Tamaki River, along a track used by Maori to drag their waka over the isthmus.

Land for the ambitious scheme had been reserved in 1896. Its revival by the harbour board in the early 1960s generated one study, many newspaper stories, but no digging, largely because of its huge cost.

Long-time Auckland mayor Sir Dove-Myer Robinson was among the first to call for more public access to the harbour, vowing to open Queen's Wharf to the public in his 1977 election campaign.

The harbour board responded by nominating Princes Wharf as its commercial use declined.

"Anything which will induce people to go on to the wharf and look at our wonderful harbour is fine by me," Sir Dove-Myer said in 1978. "We tend to take the harbour for granted."

Princes Wharf became the focal point for bringing the city back to the water, although the board's Westhaven marina complex, finished in 1982, finally gave recreational boaties a central harbour.

The board built its own nine-level headquarters, a distinctive octagonal building crouching on concrete legs, on the end of Princes Wharf in the mid-1980s. It also decided to spruce up the adjoining ferry basin and retain the grand 1912 Ferry Building for redevelopment.

Suddenly, there was a chink of harbour light for the public.

In October 1987, Mace Development won a 15-company race to redevelop Princes Wharf. Its $190 million plan featured a four-storey hotel, a three-theatre complex, and a 600-seat performing arts centre.

Nine days later the stock market crash blew a huge hole in the investment market. The Mace plan was revised, struggled through planning objections, was revised again, but eventually failed to get off the ground.

In 1989 the Railways Corporation also weighed in with a 30ha redevelopment plan for its downtown railyards, based around a casino in the central railway station. The Government put a stop to that in 1991, saying it did not want a state-owned enterprise involved in the "commercial risk" of a casino.

Development in the area has since been piecemeal, including the controversial straggly Quay St frontage of a service station and fast-food outlets.

Even more ambitious than the Mace plan was the Kupe Group's $1.6 billion proposal in 1988 for the Britomart bus station site. It proposed three towers, the largest 55-storeys high, housing luxury and business hotels, offices, shops and public space. The group finally abandoned its plans in 1990, blaming an oversupply of office space, and the sharemarket crash fallout.

At the end of 1988 Fletcher Development and Construction released a $500,000 master vision for the waterfront.

The man who spearheaded the spectacular East London docks redevelopment, Reg Ward, was a consultant for the study which incorporated the Princes Wharf and Kupe plans, plus options for housing and shops in the Viaduct Basin, and a monorail from the waterfront to the top of Queen St.

Disputes between the Auckland City Council, the harbour board's successor, Ports of Auckland Ltd, and the Auckland Regional Authority over land ownership threatened to send dreams of a unified development to a watery grave.

The intervention of central Government and the impetus of an America's Cup defence - Michael Fay's ultimately ill-fated court challenge for the Auld Mug in 1989 - got the vision machine cranked up again.

Briefly. Fast-track legislation to prepare a cup defence was passed, then repealed in 1990 when a New York court ruled against Fay.

Successive mayors Colin Kay and Les Mills promised action on the water's edge, but by the early 1990s Aucklanders were weary of the talk. When a joint regional council-city council scheme, the harbour edge plan, was released in 1991, there was an overwhelming sense of deja vu.

The long-planned Maritime Museum offered a small concrete antidote in 1993, but the critical momentum was provided by two boat races.

The Whitbread round-the-world stopover in Auckland in 1994 was the spur for the port company's redevelopment of old offices and workshops on the Viaduct Basin.

Black Magic's America's Cup win in 1995 and the Viaduct Basin's logical site as a defence headquarters finally got landowners and investors moving.

Development has been non-stop since, bringing apartments, restaurants and bars to the water's edge from Princes Wharf (the Kitchener Group won a renewed race for its redevelopment in 1997) to the Viaduct.

The public spaces are not as large and coherent as Wellington's or as stylish as Sydney's, but in the glacial time-frame of urban development the past few years have been at express pace.

Queen's Wharf could be the next to be open for redevelopment when its commercial viability fades in the next five or 10 years. The tank farm may be a longer wait as some oil company leases do not expire for more than 20 years.

But in the meantime, you can always dream. And pray we keep the America's Cup.