Brian Rudman: Let's test true commitment to arts

Cartoon / Peter Bromhead

As every downtown property developer knows, Auckland City planners go all weak at the knees at the talk of free public artworks. Especially those on the grand scale.

They can add extra floors to new buildings and reduce car park requirements and development levies. And it's all legal. Indeed encouraged.

That's why the foyer in just about every big building in the CBD is littered with giant spoked wheels, dangling polystyrene feathers and great blobs of rounded stone.

Gambling giant SkyCity is now taking the biggest artwork wager of all.

It's proposing that the city council close its eyes for a moment and let SkyCity take over a 48m-long slab of the airspace over Federal St.

In return, the gamblers promise to wrap the hijacked space in an artwork so magical that when the city fathers open their eyes they won't even notice their property has disappeared.

To its credit, the Advisory Panel for Public Art doesn't include prestidigitation in its list of approved arts and is refusing to endorse the proposal.

Blunt and to the point, it says the proposed 686sq m aerial banqueting hall straddling the street will "obliterate open sky space", block views of St Patrick's Cathedral and "effectively privatise public space and set a very uncomfortable precedent".

It adds that "there is potential for a high quality public art/architectural outcome 'suspended' above Federal St, but the proposal ... does not achieve this".

More enthusiastic is the city's urban design champion, Ludo Campbell-Reid, who sees the proposal as a way of transforming the "cluttered, unappealing and intimidating pedestrian environment" of Federal St at SkyCity's expense.

He doesn't quite put it in those words. He says "this is a golden opportunity to progress the dialogue", but that's what he means.

He fizzes about SkyCity having hired architect Gordon Moller and "a nationally recognised artist" to work together "to develop an exciting concept that would cleverly sheath or conceal the overbuilding in order to create a significant piece of public art".

He says that "rather than being an overbridge that is covered in art, it needs to be a piece of art that contains a conference facility".

The SkyCity submission is even more lyrical, talking of it being inspired by the Aurora Australis - the Southern Lights - with "subtle" movement of light through and in the structure - sorry, art work.

Last Thursday, the City Development Committee went along with Mr Campbell-Reid's recommendation that negotiations begin with SkyCity over the detail designs of the proposal, and the terms and conditions of the airspace takeover, any decisions conditional on council approval.

Personally, I'm with APPA and its concern about the awful precedent of privatising public space. Still, as the council has decided to agree to begin talks with SkyCity, now would be an excellent time to test its true commitment to the arts.

In the early 1990s, when the developers of the SkyCity project were selling the project to a divided city, its 700-seater theatre was a big selling point. These days, and under new management, a question mark now hangs over the venue.

Auckland Theatre Company, which traditionally has used it for two big income-generating shows a year, found the doors closed this year for its big end-of-year show.

Whether it will be available for the Auckland Festival next March is up in the air.

Rumours within the sector have it being converted into a sports bar, or a flat-floored, dine and cabaret show room. SkyCity management have not replied to my queries on this.

In most cities of this size it wouldn't matter, there'd be alternative venues. But in Auckland, apart from the University-owned Maidment Theatre, whose future is also in the balance, SkyCity Theatre is the only suitably sized commercial drama theatre in town.

SkyCity seems to be turning a deaf ear to this problem.

But now it's their turn to come cap in hand to the city seeking public airspace for their elevated banqueting hall, what a golden time, to borrow Mr Campbell-Reid's expression, "to progress the dialogue".