Brian Rudman: Swanky new bathroom for our tired old villa

Yesterday lunchtime a great slug of a man lay sprawled across the paving near the flash Britomart transport centre.

He was propped up on one elbow. Behind him, the fake volcano was spluttering away, while in front, a gaggle of excited tourists were pointing at the flock of verminous pigeons crawling all over him.

I was tempted to tell them he was one of the free fringe acts of Auckland's AK05 Festival but thought better of it. The watched and watchers were all grinning, the birds seemed happy, so who was I to be embarrassed and interfere?

But I did wander off thinking that perhaps this week's $23 million pricetag to transform "iconic Queen St into a world-class, pedestrian-friendly avenue" wasn't quite as over-the-top as I'd first thought.

Obviously, transforming the golden mile into "a stylish and sophisticated canvas for the 24-hour activity" of Downtown visitors was going to take rather more than several tonnes of bluestone paving and 80 mature nikau palm trees.

Primping up Queen St, like Vulcan Lane and High St before it, seems to be a bit like installing a dream bathroom into your tired old villa. It's not that anything's actually broken, but new taps would be nice, and wouldn't it be fun to have one of those shower units that squirt water from all directions. Before you know it, there's a bill for $23 million.

You pay up, guilty in the knowledge that out of sight and long ago, the spouting sprang a leak and you should be doing that first. Or to unmix the metaphor, that just a block away from Queen St, there are old traps in the pavement just waiting to fell an innocent ratepayer.

For instance, the site of the temporary, and long removed, North Shore bus shelter outside the People's Centre in Wyndham St.

Each day I walk over the remnant metal support, cut off at pavement level and now blackened with age, lurking in the pocked surface, proud and dangerous to the innocent.

A bit further on are the ankle-breaking holes in the Hobson St pavement near Victoria St, where service manholes lurk several centimetres below the surrounding pavement surface.

But enough of the spouting. The plans for Queen St seem commonsense, with innovative twists such as the inlaid lines in the paving between Fort St and Shortland St marking the line of the original foreshore.

There'll be wider pavements, more greenery and better lighting. My quibbles are not about what is proposed, but what has been left out.

When the first round of consultations was launched last year, I called for better verandahing to acknowledge Auckland's fickle weather. I suggested ripping out the existing mess of country town-like shelters and replacing them with something grand, and unified, running the length of the street.

The latest consultation document offers hope, claiming "it will be possible to walk almost the length of Queen St without getting wet". This will be achieved by the council working with building owners "to close gaps in the canopies, particularly at major intersections".

But the rickety verandahs themselves often leak, with water pouring through light fittings and other gaps. A good proportion of them are also eyesores that need a demolition order slapped on them if the city is ever going to achieve the goal of creating a stylish and sophisticated world-class mainstreet. New paving and nikau palms alone will not do that when all your eyes catch, as you walk along, is a mess of tired deteriorating overhangs of varying heights and ages.

Surely, if the city is paying $23 million to improve the shopkeepers' environment - and money-making potential - the least they can do is make their frontages worthy of the improvements the ratepayers are funding. Guidelines should be drawn up and enforced.

And Auckland City should set the example by providing cover alongside the Town Hall down Queen St to the Civic Theatre block. If the city sees the need for it elsewhere along Queen St, then what about the patrons of Town Hall concerts?