Brian Rudman: The green, green grass of mid-city park

These days there are all sorts of computer programs to help us redesign the kitchen, or for that matter the whole house, before we start taking to the walls with a sledge hammer. But nothing quite prepares you for the real thing.

Yesterday, Heart of the City boss Alex Swney dragged me down to the back end of the Britomart rail station to admire the temporary transformation taking place on what is normally a drab asphalt carpark.

His organisation and Britomart developer Bluewater have laid 2500sq m of grass to create The Green, an instant park to provide a setting for the travelling Coexistence art exhibition which is to open on Friday evening.

And even littered, as it was, with the metal pipework of the still-to-be-erected picture frames, what an instantly welcoming, relaxing place this arid concrete jungle had suddenly become. How depressing to think than in three weeks the cars and tarseal and reflected noise and heat will return.

But it did make me warm to the idea being canvassed that the solution to the Jean Batten Building quandary is to amend the Bank of New Zealand's masterplan, which is to knock everything standing on the 70-80 Queen St site, historic Jean Batten Building included, to make way for their new headquarters tower block.

The alternative solution would be to knock over the cruddy 1970s BNZ mini-tower as planned, but leave the historic Jean Batten building. Alongside, the 1328sq m cleared site fronting Queen St would become a city park. Something akin to Wellington's popular Midland Park.

With seating and some shade trees and a row of food and drink shops linked to a spruced up Jean Batten Building, it could be the friendly, welcoming, square that so far our city fathers and mothers have failed to deliver. It would also give breathing space, and draw attention to, the attractive historic buildings surrounding it. Just how this would all come about is the tricky bit I haven't quite solved yet, but a vision is always a good place to start.

And aren't our civic leaders always badgering us to have vision, and vibrancy and vigour?

Perhaps we could call it Foreshore Park, to remind us that the sea once stopped at Fort St. Or Market Square, to remind us of the city's first market, which grew up here in the 1840s alongside the original Government Store.

With the Historic Places Trust decision on December 19 last year to register Jean Batten Building as a Category 1 historic place - its highest grading - the bank's grand plans for the site seem dead in in the water. This is believed to be the first time the trust has slapped such an order on a threatened building since the act was amended in 1991, a good indication that this is a battle it has decided to take on as a test case, through the courts if necessary.

Whether the Australian-owned bank has the stomach to risk its "good citizen" reputation we'll have to wait and see. But there must be other central city sites that are looking increasingly attractive.

Of course there is the little matter of paying for this new park. I was hoping to reveal we Auckland ratepayers already owned it. We certainly owned the land in 1852 when it was part of a Crown grant bequeathed to the young borough of Auckland.

We still owned it in 1974 when the Herald reported the BNZ was negotiating to buy the lease of the late lamented Victoria Arcade, which it later bowled in order to build the existing bank building.

Sometime after that - one usually reliable guide has it still in city hands in 1998 - the freehold passed to the BNZ. As of yesterday afternoon, I was still trying to pin down when and why this jewel of a property slipped out of city hands.

As of July 2005, the site had an official Quotable Value capital valuation of $19.5 million, of which $18 million was the land value. Which would make it a rather expensive park. Then again, everything is relative. The city sees nothing wrong with spending more than $100 million on titivating the central business district.

And who knows, we could always trade the BNZ an attractive site with sea views at the Tank Farm.