KEY POINTS:
It's great to see that Auckland City Mayor John Banks' recent transmogrification seems to include the gaining of an appreciation of the finer things of life. In correspondence to Corrections Minister Phil Goff, he's been fuming against the 30m-high "monstrosity" planned to replace another monstrosity, Mt Eden Prison.
I must say the letter, presumably masterminded by the city bureaucrats, is full of rich irony. It rails against the visual impact the new buildings will have on motorists using the adjacent motorway as their "gateway" to Auckland, when just a little further down the highway it empties out on to Nelson St, that bleak avenue of cheap high-rise slums-to-be, all ticked through by city planners during, in part at least, Mr Banks' first term as mayor.
To me, a 30m-high accommodation block, disguised as a commercial building amidst a clutter of other commercial buildings, is rather low on the urban design crises facing this town.
At least it's not a school, or low-cost housing, which too often seems to be what ends up plonked cheek by jowl with motorways. Admittedly, the drifting diesel fumes, and the constant din, will not improve the health of the prison inmates. Still, it is going to be a short-stay remand facility only, so none will have to suffer for long.
In the letter to Mr Goff, Mr Banks' letter writer says, "You may or may not be aware that we are putting considerable pressure on private sector developers to raise their standards of urban design". If that comes as something of a surprise to most of us, the claim that follows is even harder to believe: "To date they are responding well and enthusiastically."
In his reply, Mr Goff rather calls the mayor's bluff, pointing out that "the building height issue was previously considered by the council's urban design panel and that in October 2006 the panel concluded the proposed building heights represented a good balance between the department's site-capacity requirement, retention of the heritage features and minimisation of visual impacts.
He adds: "It would be unfortunate for the integrity of the statutory process for the council to oppose the recommendations of two council-appointed panels at this late stage." Ouch.
Of course, if history is any guide, Mr Banks has nothing to worry about. Well-intentioned ministers have been promising to shut the barbaric old prison for decades. In 1995, the Corrections Department pushed for its closure. In 2000, one of Mr Goff's predecessors, Matt Robson, was predicting the doors would close in 2003. But by 2004, the place was bulging with even more inmates, causing an internal departmental report to warn "there is a high likelihood of service failure, the consequences of which would be catastrophic". By that was meant "potential injury or loss of life", litigation by families, and the sudden need for alternative accommodation "for an indeterminate length of time".
The report says it is "substandard and unsafe", leaving the department at risk of prosecution for "serious non-compliance with building codes and standards, fire safety standards and health and safety requirements".
Now, finally, it appears that a Government is prepared to deal with this scandal. If the downside is that motorists will have their view of the cityscape blocked for a few seconds as they drive past, that seems a price worth paying.
Of course, there are alternatives. One would be for the mayor to persuade those of his political persuasion to stop clamouring for increased prison sentences for every crime under the sun.
Another would be to house remand prisoners in the ghastly, prison-like blocks I mentioned that line inner-city ghettos. I suspect, though, that some of them are so flimsy the inmates would have little difficulty kicking their way to freedom through the walls. The bureaucracy that wrote Mr Banks' letter about urban design standards would have the answer. It approved them.
