COMMENT
A couple of years ago, I drove to my neighbourhood garage to get a dodgy windscreen wiper fixed, to discover it had been converted into a swish townhouse.
Luckily, another repair shop was nearby.
But it didn't last long. It was bowled to make way for an upmarket frock shop's carpark.
Such is
the fate of useful service industries in rapidly gentrifying central Auckland. And it can be bloody inconvenient.
But my woes are nothing compared with those faced by the bulk oil - vegetable and petroleum - operators of the western reclamation tank farm on the Auckland waterfront.
Their landlord, Ports of Auckland, is busy trying to give its leaseholders the heave-ho so the land - reclaimed many years ago from the sea for industrial purposes - can be converted to super-profitable, mixed-use (read apartments) zoning.
Egging the port company on are drooling property developers and local politicians with dreamy science-fiction comic visions of futuristic opera houses and apartment towers.
Not surprisingly, the existing commercial occupants, with their unpretty tanks, are finding the battle rather one-sided.
Their mood is reflected towards the end of a recent press statement which plaintively observed "the bulk liquid industry has no friends but ... "
Well it's perhaps a little early in the day to declare myself a friend of anything which labels itself "Auckland's bulk liquid infrastructure", but I do agree that it's about time Ports of Auckland and Auckland City came clean about their intentions. In particular, what plans they have to rehouse existing industries, if apartmentisation of the area is their ultimate goal.
It certainly seems to be Mayor John Banks' dream.
Last week, he declared it inappropriate to have a petrochemical industry on the city's doorstep, proclaiming: "I want to turn that area into the most magnificent urban development this country has ever seen with superb open spaces."
Such visionspeak ignores the fact that since the opening of the Marsden Pt pipeline in 1996, flammable petroleum products have declined to about 6 per cent of goods passing over the adjacent Wynyard Wharf.
It also fails to point out that this wharf also handles 90 per cent of New Zealand's edible oils, most of the bitumen for Auckland's roads, ingredients for the paint, resin and sealant industries, chemicals for wood processing and bunker oil for fishing boats, visiting liners and cargo vessels, and super yachts.
Now as always I'm wary of independent reports bearing figures, but for what it's worth the claim is that 4000 jobs and annual regional business turnover of more than $1.2 billion will be jeopardised if the bulk liquid facilities are forced to close.
But I do accept that this product has to come into the country somewhere and all the port company seems to be offering is a container-based system, which importers say will be more expensive and lead to more retail costs, business closures and job losses.
I've always liked the silhouettes of the big tanks on the skyline. Like the fishing boats and shipbuilding yards and the container hoists, they add to the magic of a major port city. The thought of rows of expensive apartments leaves me cold.
Ports of Auckland, though, can't seem to get rid of the tanks fast enough. The company - 80 per cent publicly owned, remember - demonstrated its lust for the one-off profit with its sale of Westhaven marina.
The same pattern now seems to be repeating itself. Having decided that the handling of bulk liquids is no longer core port business, the company has told reclamation leaseholders that their contracts will not be renewed when the majority expire between 2012 and 2025.
Multinational oil giant Shell has a rare perpetual lease on a large site from which tanks have been removed.
It has tried to renegotiate the terms of its lease, but the port company has it over a barrel, replying "It's tanks or nothing".
To me it's daft of city planners to allow residential creep to gradually suffocate neighbourhood industry, whether it be a corner garage or a regionally important port-related activity.
At least I could follow my mechanic across town to his new site. Auckland's bulk liquid infrastructure has been offered no such practical alternative.
Why, you have to ask, not?
COMMENT
A couple of years ago, I drove to my neighbourhood garage to get a dodgy windscreen wiper fixed, to discover it had been converted into a swish townhouse.
Luckily, another repair shop was nearby.
But it didn't last long. It was bowled to make way for an upmarket frock shop's carpark.
Such is
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