Brian Rudman: Ditch high rise - try an Opera House

At the risk of alarming him, I agree wholeheartedly with Auckland City Mayor Dick Hubbard that in redeveloping the 35ha tank farm, "we have one chance to get this right".

He's dead right too in saying that with this redevelopment we have one of those "one-off" opportunities cities occasionally get "to add something very special to the core makeup or character that defines them as a city".

But where he and I part company is in his enthusiasm for the ho-hum blueprint the city has drawn up.

If this is to be a defining moment in Auckland's life, we should be thinking Eiffel Tower, or Statue of Liberty or Sydney Opera House or Palace of the Arts, Valencia, rather than 16-storey office towers.

More fundamentally we should be thinking of reclaiming this land for the benefit of the citizens of Auckland, not leaving it to become an exercise designed to swell the coffers of the port company.

Any vision for this wondrous piece of waterfront land is going to be fatally blurred while the main driver for anything that happens to it remains the balance sheet of Ports of Auckland.

This land is rapidly becoming surplus to the needs of the port company.

So unwanted for its main business, in fact, that the company is busy filling in 9.4h of harbour to the east, to enlarge its container terminal.

Instead, the port company, and its 100 per cent owner, the Auckland Regional Council, want to employ the land as a means of becoming major inner-city landlords.

The ARC, in particular, wants to milk this cash cow to provide cash for its other activities - building more drains, that sort of thing.

This is the corset constricting any chance of realising Mr Hubbard's dream of "unlocking the area's potential".

The mayor rightly says we have one chance to get it right.

To ensure that, we have to start at the governance level.

We only have to drive past the Quay Park disgrace on the eastern seafront to see how ineffective planning rules and regulations can be in guaranteeing world-class results.

First we have to follow the example of many other waterfront cities and establish a waterfront authority to take on the ownership and development of those parts of the publicly owned waterfront estate surplus to the port's needs.

Some would argue for the inclusion of city council-owned property like Westhaven Marina and the Viaduct Basin, and some or all of the wharves as well.

What does seem essential is that this authority have control over the long-term planning for the whole area and that would include Queen's and Captain Cook wharves, which, according to port company plans, could still be a carpark for imported secondhand cars until 2040.

That's not the front-yard look most other "world-class" cities aspire to.

Parts of the city's vision, no one would argue with - the Wero Bridge, for instance, linking Wynyard Pt at the sea end of the tank farm with the Viaduct Basin and the CBD.

The retention of the marine industry in its own precinct is an essential adjunct to existing fishing and pleasure boat activity.

There's a northern park about a third the size of Victoria Park and a smaller "central park" about the size of a rugby field.

But the dominant look appears to be blocks of offices, apartments and shops, in parts towering as high as the city administration building.

Sort of Newmarket or Symonds St by the sea.

Certainly not the legacy I imagine the mayor was enthusing about leaving "for our grandchildren and their grandchildren". Well, I hope it's not.

Of course there's a need for some commercial and residential activity. But that's not going to achieve the city's aim of providing a place "for the people of Auckland and beyond to celebrate the city's diverse cultural expressions, love of the harbour etc etc ... "

Around the world, cities have used their redundant port areas as places to stamp their identity on a crowded world cultural and tourist map.

Magnificent destination-structures have been erected, London's wheel, Valencia's recently completed eye-catching performing arts centre, and dare I mention it, Wellington's Te Papa.

That's the sort of thing we should be aiming for, not how much money we can raise from glass towers and apartment blocks.

Auckland City wants feedback by March 17.

It will be no use you, or the grandkids, complaining later.