It's not clear now how many bonus office floors were added to the ANZ Centre in return for the three-storey creche, but Waitemata Local Board member and planner Christopher Dempsey thinks about five.
What is clear is that the bonus-earning creche is no more, but the other half of the deal, the extra floors of lucrative rentable space, will remain.
Of course it's worse than that, because the creche space is being converted into yet more rentable meeting spaces or, as Mr Dempsey quips, "a new kindergarten for suits".
Scott Pritchard, chief executive of current building owner AMP NZ Office, says, "What was granted in the 1980s is not relevant now."
If he really meant that, he'd be busy sawing off the top four or five floors at the top of his tower block, because what was granted back then were extra floors, in return for providing the citizens of Auckland with a new inner-city creche. But that's the last thing he's planning to do.
Which gets us back to those naive city bureaucrats. They were so trusting that they wrote nothing into title deeds of the building to hold the property owner, then and in the future, to the terms of the consents.
Creches must have been high up the council's bonus list at the time, because the story jogs my memory about another creche that went missing in the monumental Fay Richwhite Building, at the corner of Queen and Wyndham Sts, around the same time. Joint developers Fay Richwhite and NZI were granted extra floors in return for providing a creche and residential space.
But by the time construction was near complete, the creche had mysteriously disappeared and the residential space had shrunk.
This was 1988. After some controversy, city politicians refused an application by the developers for the creche to be replaced by a health club and bar, but did agree to a reduction in the residential space. Haggling continued until late November, when the Planning Tribunal approved a deal in which the creche was abandoned in exchange for alternative public amenities that included extra public toilets, a pedestrian bridge to an adjacent building and an undertaking by Fay Richwhite et al to fund the establishment of a new council creche in the Ellen Melville Hall.
Given this climate, it does seem amazing that council officers weren't more cynical and businesslike and made sure building owners and their successors were permanently locked into keeping their side of their bargains with the citizens of Auckland.
Mr Dempsey says nothing much has changed and he wants action. He says the bonus from the council gives property owners access to valuable, publicly owned airspace. If they renege on their deal, this airspace should return to "the commons".
If taking the chainsaw to the building is impractical, he suggests an alternative: handing the "bonus" floors over for public use. It seems it's too late to reclaim the public airspace in the ANZ Centre, but surely it's something for the council to get on with before the next development boom begins.
