White whale? Fears over Auckland’s new ‘gilded lily’ $320m city park

Tuesday, 19 November 2024

Auckland Council’s development arm, Eke Panuku, is fretting over the possibility that an extraordinary new park planned for the city centre might lose funding and political will over the decades it will take to build it. They’re right to have concerns, reports Jonathan Killick.

If there’s a perfect symbol for the far-reaching aspirations of Auckland’s $320 million proposed new waterfront park and mixed use development, it’s perhaps the frolicking whales.

Highly-stylised renders show a lush pōhutukawa forest on a peninsula surrounded by leaping dolphins, jubilant orca and baleen whales spouting geysers.

Works are expected to begin this year on what will be the first new large-scale park in the city for 100 years. Dubbed Te Ara Tukutuku, the plans show two public pools, a plaza and events building, new wharf space, tidal steps, a waka launching area, artificial reefs and extensively landscaped hills.

It’s a far cry from the current scene of soil contaminated by former gasworks and petrol tanks that stood on the site.

The $320m is for the whole redevelopment of Wynyard Point, which includes contamination works, fixing seawalls and creating infrastructure to support the future development sites, so the whole area, not just the public space.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. At a board meeting last month, Eke Panuku senior staff expressed their concerns that the ambitious project might never get done.

In a nutshell, it’s going to take decades to complete, and will only continue if future councillors keep agreeing to hundreds of millions in funding top-ups. To succeed, public enthusiasm for the project will have to remain high, despite it being many years before results are seen.

“I think that it’s really important that this project succeeds,” says Warren and Mahoney architect and Eke Panuku board member, John Coop.

At the meeting he tells staff the design is truly “world-class”, but asks the awkward question on everyone’s lips.

“Who has been the bad cop throughout this design process to ensure the team is thinking about the dollars?”

At present, the $320m project has only been allocated half of the funding that it will need by 2034. Staff say the project could be done sooner, but having to match progress to funding is slowing it down.

“It’s basically been a pretty sickly child, financially, to be blunt,” as chief executive David Rankin puts it.

Director Aaron Hockley adds: “People start thinking it’s off in the never-never, and certainly people that I’ve connected with are excited by it, but say ‘it’s 10 years [away], it’ll probably never happen’.”

And, in that time there’s a risk that elected councillors might decide there are other priorities or that selling off the prime waterfront land is more attractive.

“Are they going to say ‘Hey just chop these bloody things up and sell them so we can get some money back, and forget about the park?’… You can sort of feel it coming,” says chair David Kennedy.

They’re right to be worried. Councillor Ken Turner, of the Waitākere Ward well west of the city centre, tells the Sunday Star-Times he thinks it might be “unaffordable”.

“I know it’s a huge opportunity for a world-class facility, and a prized addition to the CVs of those lucky and talented enough to be on the successful design team. But who's paying?”

“There are public assets spread across this city which are in various stages of neglect due to a shortage of money and interest.”

Councillor Mike Lee, whose ward of Waitematā would benefit most, is even more critical, calling the plans “ridiculous”.

“Frankly, its heavily-engineered fake hills and valleys, ngahere and even faux volcanic larva around the foreshore is gilding the lily.”

He says the former regional council had put $20m aside for a basic lawned park with flax and pōhutukawa in 2006, which he believes ought to have sufficed.

“I don’t like to be unkind but people who go on about being ‘world class’ often portray a certain provincialism,” he says.

“I thought the Te Wero bridge debacle was bad enough, but no… To vainly try to compete with nature, [Eke Panuku has] surely lost the plot. Roll on CCO reform.”

(The cost of repairs to that bridge has now increased from $7.7m to $10.6m, and the race is on to open it in December ahead of Sail GP in January.)

At the board meeting, staff discuss the challenges of managing funding. Eke Panuku only has $900m in capital expenditure budgeted for all its urban regeneration projects across the city in Auckland’s Long Term Plan (LTP).

“We are kind of spreading the Marmite ever more thinly,” says chief executive David Rankin.

“[And,] we can’t simply suck out of the regional locations, which tend to take less money anyway.”

The LTP charts $50 billion in spending to be poured into the waterfront over the next 20 years.

And the CCO is fighting for every dollar it gets from council, say staff.

“We fight the good fight continually, but the reality is for every dollar of capex available, there is $20 worth of bids from transport, community facilities and what have you,” Rankin says.

One major selling point for Te Ara Tukutuku park plans is the inclusion of four development sites that will be sold to developers, bringing in an expected $150m. A staffer also clarifies that the $320m figure includes decontamination works, fixing seawalls and infrastructure to support development.

Eke Panuku has a proven track record when it comes to selling off underutilised land and using the proceeds to develop functional public space.

Auckland University senior architecture and planning lecturer Bill McKay has taken a look at the plans for Te Ara Tukutuku, and says they’re “quite achievable” - at least compared to trying to build an iconic building akin to the Sydney Opera House. He says he’s relieved early plans for a building at Wynyard were shelved.

McKay believes that green park space will prove “critical” in the future as Auckland becomes more developed and dense. The challenge, he says, is getting the public and elected officials to think long-term and stick to the plan.

“As a nation we are pretty pathetic at sticking to plans, with successive administrations flip-flopping and cancelling things or doing them in a cut-price, half-arsed way.”

He says plans to scrap CCOs like Eke Panuku, bringing them back in-house to council, will likely result in further loss of long-term thinking.

“The con of CCOs is they can be a law unto themselves, but the benefit is that they allow the professionals to just get on with the job.”

Eke Panuku certainly appears to be aware of that tension, with elected members bringing their own priorities to the table.

Chair David Kennedy asks: “Is there a new harbour bridge risk here? How would we deal with that?”

“There’s no answer to that one,” responds David Rankin. “[There was also] a stadium we had to get shot of last year.”

But, ultimately Kennedy answers his own question, and the solution is PR spin.

“I think an external comms plan, which convinces HQ, as I call them, [and] the broader public, so that they say it’s going to be the coolest thing ever for Auckland.

“So, we can’t do anything else with it.”

Kennedy enthusiastically tells staff that one day they will be able to say that they contributed to a once-in-a-generation project for Auckland.

“After they’re dead probably, unfortunately,” he adds.

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