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New buildings round Waitangi Park – a temporary delay to a costly plan
Wellington.Scoop
By Lindsay Shelton
As the trees start to grow, Waitangi Park is starting to look like a real park rather than just an open space. But most people have forgotten that the Wellington City Council wants more buildings around the park – a big building to the west (next to Te Papa) and two or three to the east.
The council hasn’t forgotten. Its waterfront company has kept a list, and in a planning document which councilors are reading this week it refers to the spaces as “identified development sites.”
Many of us think it would be dreadful to allow new buildings around the waterfront park. And for the moment the council’s ambitions have been delayed. The planning document tells councilors that “the timing of commercial developments [has been] significantly deferred.” Market conditions are blamed. “We may not see development on most of the larger waterfront sites for up to five years.”
As a consequence, the waterfront company has at last “suspended” the strange work that it’s been busily doing for several years – designing waterfront buildings before it had found anyone to occupy them.
Last December, the city approved a loan of $15million to the company, to manage the “timing difference” between delayed revenue from new buildings and the cost of continuing public space development. This was supposed to make the company self sufficient.
But the recession has intervened. This week the company is asking for “temporary additional funding,” this time “$4.3million as a short-term advance.” No wonder the council has decided to wind it up. The waterfront will cost less to run if it’s taken over by the council, because of “integration of support functions” and “lower average borrowings.” The saving over the next ten years would be $5.7million.
The company is fighting back. It’s been given a closing date of July 1 next year. But it wants to carry on at least till the end of 2011. Councilors will have to decide this week. Will they remove life-support as scheduled? Or will they give the invalid one more year of life, as well as another transfusion.
They are also being told about some “worst-case scenarios.” If even one of the new waterfront buildings doesn’t go ahead, there’ll be a $9million shortfall for the city. And if none of them are built, loans of $41million would be unpaid, with an annual interest cost of $2.8million. “It is however reasonable,” says a council report “to expect that there will be commercial proceeds coming back into the project when the development market improves.” In other words, the council is determined to push on with its building plans.
In the meantime, the expiring waterfront company has come up with some new ideas. A temporary campervan park, at a price of up to $500,000, to replace a temporary car park. A temporary “tensile fabric” structure (at what cost?) on the temporary car park next to Te Papa. (The space that everyone thought would be part of Waitangi Park.) A temporary iceskating rink on Queens Wharf. It wants to use these new activities as reasons for delaying its demise. But none of the ideas is a justification for extending the life of the costly waterfront company.
Read also:
Substantial public opposition to new rules for waterfront buildings
The proposed buildings on Waitangi Park will never be built, and the council just cannot anticipate that they will be. There is a direction to this type of history. When the waterfront project started there was to be a 20+ story tower building at Kumutoto (planning approval was granted before the ’87 crash) and Chaffers was to be covered in town houses. (The rowing club buildings that just won a historic places category were to be demolished by Mayor Fowler who described them as rubbish, and the much-celebrated lagoon was only saved from filling by the council like the Frank Kitts area, by public protest. The breakwater where the Tugboat on the Bay is moored was built for the replacement rowing club. ) The Waterfront Framework only allows for the possibility of buildings on Chaffers because the council reps forced the inclusion of fudge words. Then the competition winning entry for the park was described as only reserving areas for buildings, not approving them.
But all that was then. This is now. And in five years time people will love the waterfront as it is and no-one will be able to seriously suggest building apartments and offices there any more than they could now in the botanical gardens, just to help the rates.
I am not sure that Lindsay is right in assuming that the $4.3m now needed by WWL is a request for new borrowing. I recall that in its report for the financial quarter ended December 2008, the company stated that it had borrowed $3.9m from the Council but it expected to borrow more in the future. I took that to mean that it was drawing on what is in effect an “overdraft limit” of $15m and that the ‘new’ $4.3 m would also be in that category. But I agree that this ought to be clarified. Now if Ian Pike follows Wellington Scoop (and if he is truly tuned into engaging with the public he should!) perhaps he could set us right.