Brian Rudman: Distant glimmer of what Queens Wharf could be

It's difficult to decide whether the design contest for Queens Wharf is ending with a bang or a whimper.

Certainly Auckland Regional Council chairman, Mike Lee's timely outburst could be seen as explosive - but only if Aucklanders were deeply committed to the project.

And all the indications are that anyone who cared about the development of what Unitec architecture professor Dushko Bogunovich calls "the hottest site in the country" has long since turned off, disillusioned about the pitiful budget and the short-sighted design brief.

Having realised the dream of many Aucklanders by "liberating" the downtown wharf from the clutches of the port company, what did our public authorities come up with as their 1000-year dream project?

Well certainly not a world-class challenge to Sydney's Opera House or Agra's Taj Mahal. Instead, they dug into their plastic money-boxes and waved a miserly $47 million in the air, saying we want a quick-build cruise ship terminal with some space left over for a "party central" venue for the 2011 Rugby World Cup.

For me, the contest wimped out at that stage. With Mr Lee now calling the design contest "a flop" and Auckland Mayor John Banks expressing "some sympathy" for his political rival's viewpoint, it's nice to think the establishment is catching up with me.

Perhaps the best outcome would be to leave the wharf au naturel for 2011, then hang some bunting on one of the sheds, erect a couple of giant screens, back up some beer tankers, and tell the overseas fans this is what grassroots New Zealand rugby is all about.

With Queens Wharf, Auckland politicians such as Mr Lee and Mr Banks are playing a hand which mixes opportunism with optimism. The opportunism involves shaking central government down for half the $40 million purchase price for the wharf, willingly paid because Prime Minister John Key had decided the wharf was the ideal sport for the rugby tournament's "party central".

The optimism comes with both believing that once the rugby fans have been catered for and the cruise ship terminal finished, there will be space left over at the pointy end of the wharf for some distinctive structure. If not in my lifetime or theirs, then at some time in the distant future.

To me that's a distressingly short-term and disastrously piecemeal way of liberating and exploiting the city's "hottest site".

The first debate should have been over the cruise ship terminal, both about the merits of siting it on this wharf, and on ratepayers and taxpayers having to pay for what is a strictly commercial facility.

The port company must be laughing all the way to the bank. Not only has it extracted $40 million from taxpayers and regional ratepayers as its price for handing the wharf back to the people, it has also persuaded Auckland City to pay $40 million-plus to build it a nice new world-class cruise ship terminal. Given the Government's interest in reining-in local government spending, I'd have thought a facility like this, which is strictly commercial and benefits mainly foreign tourists and foreign ship owners, is something that the users and/or the port company should be funding, not me. As for siting, why not stay on Princes, or move a little further up or down the waterfront?

Of the finalists, only one, a consortium under the name Tasman Studio, burst out of the narrow constraints of the competition, coming up with a second entry entitled "Beyond the Brief". Included in the group are experts from firms BECA, Warren and Mahoney, Moller Architects and Boffa Miskell. Their stage two proposal looked to a future where a public structure - possibly privately funded - could rise at the end of the wharf. I'm drawn to it, if only because it offers a glimmer of what could be. That, and it incorporates a 600-seater drama theatre which I've banged on about before.

Trying to broaden its appeal, they've also invited and received interest from Auckland Museum, the National Library, Auckland Theatre Company, and, rather oddly, the New Zealand Maritime School.

This is the one entry that does remind us of what could be. Perhaps that's why it both depresses and attracts me. Depresses because it's just a pale germ of the development that should grace this site. Attracts because, we Aucklanders know that if we don't grasp at straws, we likely as not, will end up with nothing.