Letter from Elsewhere
© Anne Else; 1 March 2000
Battling the "Developers"
Like the White Rabbit, I am Late Again: even with an extra day thrown in, I could not manage to produce this Letter before the end of February. But I have a good excuse. We Wellingtonians have had plenty to occupy us this year apart from the words and actions of the new Government. As has so often been the case over the last fifteen years, large numbers of us - several thousand, at last count - have been trying to persuade the powers that be (the City Council, this time) NOT to do something.
Ever since it became clear that the advent of container shipping would free up large areas of waterfront land, there have been arguments about what to do with it. One issue that fired people up was a proposed casino, which would block off the water's edge. In belated community consultations, all those consulted (except, rather ironically, the Kaumatua Council) believed that there should not be a casino on the waterfront, and most thought there should not be a casino in Wellington at all. But it was stopped only because of mass public opposition.
Meanwhile Lambton Harbour Management, the body charged by the Council with "developing" the waterfront, showed its firm grasp of commercial reality by building not one but two ugly monstrosities bang in the middle of it. The Events Centre (such a clever name) is at least reasonably successful in terms of use, though audiences say the heat and dreadful seating makes going to concerts there akin to undergoing a painful initiation ceremony. But the bar/restaurant alongside nearly bankrupted the team who added it to their stable of successful pubs, such as the Backbencher, because people just don't go down to the waterfront when it's cold, wet and/or windy. Another small problem is the fact that apart from a few perilous pedestrian crossings and one magnificent City to Sea bridge, built by an earlier, more enlightened council, the waterfront is cut off from the city by Jervois Quay, a busy four-lane highway.
These elementary difficulties seemed to have escaped Lambton Harbour Management too, because opposite the Events Centre they built an even uglier Retail Centre - two floors of huge, barn-like shop spaces (exactly like the hundreds of shops over on Lambton Quay, only bigger), which they fondly imagined would be snapped up by eager tenants, and pull in a never-ending stream of equally eager customers to cover the high rents. But no. One by one, the hopeful retailers folded their tents and stole away. Like the pub, they found that there were just not enough customers. Only the cafes and food hall seemed to be doing okay.
Now this is the waterfront, remember. The whole point of a waterfront is the water. Yet so desperate did the LHM become that they then mooted turning the upper floor of the Retail Centre, including the bits with the best views, into - get this - a cinema. The citizens hooted with derision. Putting a cinema on the waterfront made as little sense as putting, say, a casino there. So now LHM have handed the whole thing, even the bits that did work, over to Shell Oil, to use as corporate offices. The café has closed, and we can no longer sit and watch the boats and waves while we drink our coffee. The two separate restaurants which remain, housed in old, attractive wharf buildings, are beyond the reach of our and many others' wallets. In the course of this spectacularly inept performance, LHM managed to run up a large debt for the council to deal with.
Everyone would agree that there is still plenty of scope for improvement. Community consultations have been held in abundance. I took part in one of them myself. For a weekend, expert designers and planners from the Washington Waterfront Centre worked with three groups to come up with principles and options for the waterfront. The core recommendation was a structure to allow "regular, meaningful public participation in the development of what is, after all, a major publicly-owned asset" (p.28 of the report). Other key points were taming the traffic along Jervois Quay, and retaining and reusing the existing buildings. No one wanted a large number of additional buildings. Focus groups came up with very similar points. The key attraction, they agreed, is not the commercial activity, but the sea and the open space. So nothing should be done to destroy this.
That was in 1996. But in 1999, the council and LHM came up with an extraordinary proposal, known as Variation 17, which flew in the face of everything the citizens had said over the years. They planned to build what has been aptly described as a "Great Wall" of more than 20 new buildings, four to ten storeys high, including six new buildings on Chaffers Park, the only remaining large open space. This tidal wave of buildings was supposed to be necessary to pay for developing public space. What was more, they wanted to change the District Plan provisions to give blanket approval for the entire site, and remove the public's right to be notified or consulted on individual developments.
To give just one example of the impact this little building spree would have, the Circa Trust was suddenly informed that their theatre, one of the few genuinely successful "developments" on the waterfront, was to have a 14 storey building built over and around it. Ray Henwood of Circa summed up neatly when he said, "It is the height of idiocy to destroy a view in order to create a viewshaft." Yet there was still nothing in the plan whatsoever to tackle the major problem of Jervois Quay.
When Waterfront Watch revealed the full enormity of Variation 17, the massive public outcry culminated in a meeting which packed out the Town Hall, with impassioned speeches from the likes of Morrie Love, Geoffrey Palmer, Phillida Bunkle and Mary Varnham. The mayor then backed off, as is his wont, and two councillors changed sides. So for the moment we have once again reached stalemate, while the council calls for yet more submissions and opinion polls. But soon the developers will be back, having meetings behind closed doors, pouring their seductive streams of words and figures - especially figures - into receptive ears. And then it will be all on again, this time with new subtleties designed to pull the wool over the eyes of the pesky public.
This sad saga shows up some of the fundamental problems with the way local government is currently structured. All that concerned citizens can do is say what they want and what they don't want, and then object when the council and the developers repeatedly ignore them. We are then accused of holding up development. The people who do have the power to do things on the waterfront look at this last, loveliest open space, in a city woefully short of it, and see nothing but commercial potential. They persist in trying to make money directly out of the waterfront, instead of seeing it as a gateway enhancing the existing city. Their impoverished imaginations cannot encompass any kind of development beyond private profit, from apartments, office buildings and yet more shops, with perhaps a little slice shaved off for "public amenities" in the bits left over. (The Business Roundtable refers to the whole of the environment as an "amenity".)
Well, we are so fed up now that a goodly number of us are demanding that the whole area be vested as a reserve, so that we don't have to fight the same battles year after year. This wouldn't stop the existing derelict historic buildings being renovated for new uses, and nearly everyone agrees that this is long overdue. But it would put an end to mad dreams of privately owned multi-story buildings lining the water in every direction, while we petty men and women walk under their huge legs and peep about.
If you'd like to support the campaign to keep Variation 17 at bay and preserve the waterfront for public use, contact Waterfront Watch at PO Box 9668, Marion Square, Wellington, or email Mary Varnham at [email protected]
Email Anne Else
[ Letters'Archive ] | | [ Women's Policy Forum ] | | [ Anne Else ]
www.geocities.com/nzwomen/AnneElse/elsewhere20000301.html