Architects oppose 'ugly' apartment tower in Auckland

By ANNE GIBSON

A historic Spanish mission-style tower will be revealed when the St James cinema complex is developed - but Aucklanders will pay a high price for the facade's restoration.

A bulky 37-level apartment tower is to be built on the former Odeon/Regent/Westend theatre buildings site from 302 to 322 Queen St, which spans through to Lorne St behind.

Although the proposals include a nod to history, with a tower hidden since the 1950s uncovered, the plans are opposed by some Auckland architects, including architect and planner Dr Dushko Bogunovich.

Any proposals to revitalise the city's heart would be killed by "monsters" like the planned St James tower, he said yesterday.

In an email campaign over the past few days targeting more than 30 media, local body officials, planners and architects, Dr Bogunovich has garnered support for his objection to the apartment tower's passage through the planning processes.

At least 20 architecture colleagues, practising and academic, backed his view on the St James proposal's lack of aesthetics, he said.

As associate professor of urban design at Unitech's school of architecture and a member of Urban Auckland, Dr Bogunovich said a bad aspect of the tower was the fact that permission for it was given on a non-notified basis or secretive basis so there had been no chance to object.

"Incredibly, the Auckland City Council staff and councillors recently granted a non-notified resource consent to this ugly, out-of-scale building, which is to tower over Auckland's most important civic space and cultural precinct," he said in an email.

But an email recipient took Dr Bogunovich to task on that point.

Barry Rae, of consultants Barry Rae Transurban, said it was no surprise "that council has followed the Resource Management Act process and the district plan - that is what they are supposed to do".

Dr Bogunovich replied that the act was known to be inadequate and that although the urban design panel had been in force nearly a year, it had failed to stop the St James project or have it amended.

Although the council stated it wanted good urban design and said it understood quality architecture, "why would they coolly approve an eyesore which will sit literally outside their office windows?"

The Herald reported on August 27 that Paul Doole's Norfolk Trustees went to the council with a non-notified application to restore the historic Spanish mission-style St James theatre which was built in 1928, expose an obscured tower covered by cladding since the 1950s and demolish the many buildings on the large site.

The Historic Places Trust backed the plan, although a report from Ian Grant of its heritage division criticised "an inappropriate" glass canopy across a Lorne St facade.

Doole, a private developer, has transformed an area around the High Court at Auckland, building large apartment blocks like the Darlinghurst on Eden Cres and the Connaught on Waterloo Quadrant.

Council community planning manager Jo Wiggins said the St James project was well through the council approval process before the urban design panel, a peer review group, was set up.

Developers could not be forced to submit plans to the panel and the developer had declined to submit the St James project to it, or take notice of its criticism.