There's no such thing as a free stadium, however iconic its design

Thursday, 18 October 2018

The Auckland Waterfront Consortium has launched an ambitious proposal that would see a 50,000-seat fully enclosed stadium built alongside a redeveloped Bledisloe Wharf.

OPINION: The designs for a 50,000-seat sunken stadium on Auckland's waterfront are stunning.

The private sector promoter behind it says it'll be 'the centrepiece of a world-class waterfront that would be breathtakingly beautiful, with public access to the water's edge'.

Equally stunning, though, are the real world obstacles in its path, which The Auckland Waterfront Consortium doesn't appear to grasp.

First is the reality behind the headline claim that the $1.8 billion amenity would be at 'zero cost to ratepayers and taxpayers'.

An artist's impression of the proposed Bledisloe Wharf stadium.

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Ratepayers would first have to contribute 14 hectares of waterfront port land.

This includes Bledisloe Wharf, where the bulk of Auckland's vehicles, large machinery, and bulk cargo is landed.

The adjacent Captain Cook Wharf would also have to be demolished.

Captain Cook is the next wharf, moving east from Queens Wharf, due to become public space – and perhaps a cruise terminal under the city's long-evolved waterfront masterplan.

Clearly excluded from the 'zero cost' equation is the $15 million in annual revenue which a 2017 consultants' report said the council-owned Ports of Auckland would lose if the vehicle import trade left town.

There's also the cut in the value of Ports of Auckland, estimated by NZIER to be $170 million – a port company which for the past two years has paid a $51 million dividend to its owner, Auckland Council.

Rights to that publicly owned land would transfer to a property developer who would build apartments for 6000 residents, workplaces for a further 6000 employees – and, of course, the stadium.

AWC believes the council might want to contribute to the next, expensive phase of exploring this concept.

Astonishingly, it told me it didn't think this needed to be a political decision.

The other part of the equation is that the developer would also acquire the rights to build housing on the current site of Eden Park, a stadium owned by a private trust.

AWC places low values on both pieces of real estate, valuing Bledisloe as though it was only useable for port purposes, and Eden Park close to its book value as a stadium – not as a juicy piece of inner-suburb real estate.

AWC said it hadn't read the biggest study yet done on the feasibility of a downtown stadium in Auckland.

The $935,000 report is a freely available public document – albeit with a lot of redactions – written last year by consultants PWC at the whim of Auckland Mayor Phil Goff.

That report spelled out the tough economics of building and running stadia.

The council's attempts to keep it secret, and Goff's initial decision to then not let councillors have full copies of their own, turned the topic of downton stadia into a political poisoned chalice.

AWC is keeping sensitive detail to itself – like the area of seabed which the stadium would occupy, as only about half of it would sit on the existing wharf.

The promoters appear to hope public enthusiasm for the stunning designs will propel the council into taking a lead role in making it happen.

There is no such thing as a free stadium, however iconic its design.

A very early part of a debate – if there is one – needs to be a real assessment of the public cost, both in contributing assets, and in the loss of future revenue, for a city struggling to fund everyday necessities such as housing, transport and cleaning up the environment.