Words: Anne Gibson
Editor: David Rowe
Design and graphics: Paul Slater
Motion graphic: Ben Cummins
Photos: Greg Bowker, Leonie Johnsen, Yanse Martin, Geoff Dale, Tim Mackrell, Sylvie Whinray, Alex Burton, Michael Craig, Brett Phibbs, Jason Oxenham, Doug Sherring, Paul Estcourt, Mark Mitchell, Glenn Jeffrey, Steven McNicholl, Getty Images, Supplied

Auckland’s Sky Tower turns 25 on Wednesday and it’s hard to imagine the city’s skyline without it.

But downtown Auckland could have looked quite different. The tower’s developers had to beat out a rival bid by a consortium involving property developer Donald Trump, who had plans for a casino around the railway station.

The look of the tower itself had to win over critics: As the Sky Tower rose in the 90s, many Aucklanders didn’t like the raw concrete design.

It looked so deathly grey when it could have been painted a bright, lively colour, “not really reflecting the high-tech equipment that is available in the modern world”, said architect Gareth Ross 25 years ago.

“To me, it’s unfortunate that they’re leaving it like that because the design of the tower itself is great,” said another architect, Colin Stevens, at the time. “It definitely needs to be painted or clad. Water is going to penetrate it and, after a while, it will change colour in a bad way.”

Dull and boring due to its concrete colour, or a celebration of raw materials?

“It will present taggers with a new challenge,” the Herald reported in 1997 but architect Marshall Cook said the shaft suited its concrete look: “It blends well with lead and blue sky colour, making a dramatic landmark.”

Then-project architect Les Dykstra said a lot of research had been done before the decision was made to leave the tower concrete grey.

“Once you paint it, you’ve got ongoing maintenance. There’s also a movement in Auckland to paint over everything. We want to move away from that. We must celebrate the raw material,” Dykstra said at the time.

A special additive had been mixed with the concrete to make the shaft harder as it got older, protecting it from fungus and retaining its colour, Dykstra told the Herald on February 21, 1997.

On the eve of the structure’s 25th birthday, it’s hard to think of that tower being anything other than grey. It is lit at night to celebrate many events like Daffodil Day (green base, yellow top), pink for Mother’s Day, orange fading to yellow celebrating Matariki and a red top with a poppy emblem for Anzac Day.

Colour aside, New Zealand’s tallest man-made structure and the Southern Hemisphere’s tallest free-standing structure was an opinion lightning rod when it was planned.

In December 1993, the Herald reported plans for a $320 million project on Hobson St: a casino, 328-metre-high tower, 344-room hotel, theatre, convention areas, retail shops, four major restaurants, two food halls seating 1200 people.

“Apparently Parisians didn’t care for the Eiffel tower initially but over the years it seems to have grown on them,” wrote the Herald’s That’s Life columnist Dianne Hambrook in late 1995. “Every day the Sky Tower grows taller. It’s impossible to ignore.”

American casino operator Harrah’s, which had seven US outlets, would operate Auckland’s new casino - although Harrah’s would not be involved in the ownership of the tower. Brierley would own 80 per cent of the new casino facility and Harrah’s the other 20 per cent.

At 328m, the Sky Tower is 8m higher than the Eiffel Tower in Paris, 24m taller than Sydney’s Centrepoint, but 235m shorter than what was then the world’s largest man-made structure, the CN Tower in Toronto. Today, the world’s tallest building is the 828m Burj Khalifa in Dubai.

At the time it was all being planned here, casino magnate Donald Trump entered Auckland’s casino bidding. He was involved in what turned out to be an unsuccessful tender with Māori on land around the railway station in the city and was here for a day in 1993.

On August 23 of 1993, Trump touched down in Auckland after a first-class Air New Zealand flight from Hong Kong, the Herald reported then.

His day-long mission was to convince the Casino Control Authority to support his consortium’s bid to build a casino on the site of Auckland Railway Station.

Shrugging off driving rain and strong winds as “not too unpleasant”, he took a white stretch limousine to the Hyatt Hotel for a quick freshen up in the presidential suite.

Then Trump - described in Herald reports then as “flamboyant” and a “guru from the 1980s decade of greed” - went to inspect the site for his prospective Las Vegas or Atlantic City of the South Seas.

But Brierleys/Harrah’s won the rights and, by 1994, Fletcher had established its New Zealand team to build the casino, hotel and the tower on the huge 1.2ha Hobson St site.

The casino complex and its tower were built in a little over two years. It cost $76m to build.

Even back then, that was fast: “Sky City is being built faster than anything in the country before,” media reported in August 1995, comparing it to the 152m Cooper’s and Lybrand building, now the ANZ on Albert St. That office tower was taking three years and was at the time New Zealand’s tallest commercial tower.

The team broke the Sky Tower task into four structural components: concrete shaft, legs and collar, pod floors and mast.

Excavation began in February 1994 when Fletcher began digging a six-storey-deep hole across the entire site. Soon more than 1000 workers were on the site and the 250m-tall shaft rose at a break-neck 4m per week.

The main shaft was built using a self-climbing motorised jump form, weighing 60 tonnes and worth more than $1m. The bulk of the tower was built from that jump form, which had all the facilities of a modern construction plant.

At its centre, a 12m circular steel mould was the framework for the 500mm-think shaft wall. Concrete was sent up from the street below via a diesel-power pump, poured into the mould and vibrated down its sides.

Once the concrete or pour was dried or cured, the steel mould was unbolted and opened and the jump form was jacked up 4m by the six hydraulic rams.

Fletcher Construction project manager Warren Hollings told the Herald that staff at his firm had spent a total of 50,000 hours planning it and the job went relatively smoothly: the tower got to 102m by September 1995.

“Each stage has a direct bearing on the next. It’s like a large and complex jigsaw puzzle,” Hollings told the Herald’s Steve Raea at the time.

It was a self-climbing situation: the three-level form’s rigid legs were placed in moulded slots on the inside of the shaft walls. These held the structure secure and allowed the hydraulic rams to be removed.

Then steel workers welded and tied steel reinforcing rods in preparation for the next pour, 4m up.

Prefabricated concrete stairs, window framing and steel floors were fitted into position. The jump form’s three levels allowed staff to work above and below the last pour.

That process was repeated on a seven-day cycle to keep up with the 4m/week schedule, repeated 60 times to hit 250m, then work began on the 90m steel mast.

Construction of the revolving restaurant, bar and observation decks had begun at 150m and extended a further 100m upwards.

Hollings said in September 1995 that the final and most challenging job was putting up the 90m steel mast. It was raised in four stages by crane and purpose-built derricks, also used later to dismantle the tower’s crowning crane.

By November 1995, the tower had hit 184m and then-spokesman David Peach said the core would be finished by late March 1996. The pod was built off the side of the core, starting at 186m.

On January 21, 1996 - two years to the day from the casino licence being granted - Fletcher Construction was presented with a practical completion certificate by the building owners and architects.

On February 1, 1997, Sky City listed on the sharemarket, a day before its casino at the base of the tower opened. Brierley Investments and Harrah’s Entertainment Inc were the major shareholders with 50.6 per cent and 12.5 per cent each. The balance of the shares had been sold nearly a year previously to institutions.

“Is it too late to change our minds about the Sky Tower?” asked Herald columnist Peter Calder in 1997. “From almost everywhere in the metropolitan area it can be seen, looming out of the landscape like a control tower waiting for an alien invasion.”

Warren Hollings, project manager of the Sky City Casino and Tower, indicated the job was tough. In a book published by Fletcher Construction and printed by Dunham Bremmer & Associates Hollings said: “The completion of the casino on time was a ***** miracle! It got worse and worse and worse until we all became ***** loonies! Sure, the people are very interested in the tower and that’s what’s interesting from a PR point. But to me now it’s just another normal job.”

Mark Binns, Fletcher Construction managing director, said: “I most certainly remember the topping off ceremony where just as I got up to speak, the heavens just absolutely opened. It was on top and it was facing out west and the sky was dark and it just absolutely pissed down. I got soaked, I was garbling trying to get the words out as quickly as I could to get under an umbrella. It was just an unmitigrated disaster.”

At 20th birthday celebrations in 2017, lead architect Gordon Moller said the tower was now widely accepted, appreciated, admired and looked even better with time.

“It was fun to design. I suppose one could describe it as a folly except it’s one of those things you don’t get to do too often. It does really well in terms of a business case,” Moller said, referring to its its broadcasting and communication functions and hundreds of thousands of visitors.