This is a transcript of Simon Wilson’s weekly newsletter Love this City – exploring the ideas and events, the reality and the potential of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. To sign up, click here, select Love this City and save your preferences.
Let’s see what the public thinks! Auckland Council decided on Thursday to open public input on the future of the Western Springs stadium site. That’s great. But there are many things to say about this decision.
Not least is that, after years of indecision, procrastination and often bitter dispute, there’s now a real possibility that something good will be built there. The second is that the bitterness is not going away.
Even more striking than that, billionaire businesswoman and socialite Anna Mowbray, her former All Blacks husband Ali Williams and their fellow football enthusiast and billionaire Bill Foley have made the council an offer that seems too good to refuse. Or is it?
Their company MWF Ltd wants to spend $200-$300 million building a 12,500-seat football stadium for Auckland FC, the team Foley started and owns, along with Mowbray, Williams and others. There will also be courts for basketball and padel, and training and corporate facilities.
It’ll be called the Auckland Arena and it’s what’s called a BOOT: a project the company will build, own, operate (and maintain) and eventually transfer to the council. All MWF wants in return is a 50-year “discounted or community lease” with two 25-year rights of renewal.
It’s hard to see how this could work for them financially. The Auckland Arena is a love-the-city-love-the-sport thing. Not a profit-making investment.
If it proceeds, the council will need to attach a whole bunch of conditions to the lease. Good design, environmental safeguards, harmony with the beautiful park and unfettered public access to its other attractions, a good transport plan. Residents will have their own thoughts.
The council will also need to find a new home for the Ponsonby Rugby Club, currently headquartered there, and spend money to make it fit for purpose. But over 50 years, staff estimate the council will save $18m.
The Auckland Arena is only option 1. There are two others.
The second comes from the promoters who put on most of the outdoor festivals and concerts in the city, in partnership with Ponsonby Rugby. They want to build a 50,000-capacity concert venue, doubling as a 5000-seat stadium, with a multi-sport community hub. They call it the Western Springs Bowl.
There’s also option 3a, which is to do nothing, and option 3b, which is to adopt another plan that might arise from the consultation process.
Asking the public what we want seems like a good idea, right? Well, not according to some councillors, who objected very strongly yesterday to the way the question was being asked.
Debate got so heated and so personal that, for one long moment, Mayor Wayne Brown stared at the councillor attacking him, then just got up from the table and walked away.
His deputy, Desley Simpson, hastily leaned into her mic and called a five-minute break. When Brown came back to the table and suggested they move on, he was met with a barrage of points of order.
Which was, shall we say, ironic, because the same councillors simply refuse to stop talking when he calls for order.
The reason for all the heat: speedway.
For almost 100 years, Western Springs has been the home of speedway. That era has ended, with the council now expanding racing facilities at Waikaraka Park in Onehunga. The speedway promoter is helping them do this.
But some of the other people involved in the sport have formed a Western Springs Speedway Association (WSSA) to try to reverse that decision.
Some councillors support them. They believe speedway has been unfairly excluded and wanted it to be explicitly recognised as an option in the public consultation.
The debate was both furious and technical.
Simpson put it like this. When the council called for expressions of interest (EOI) in how the Western Springs stadium should be used, “we heard nothing from speedway. And then, not one month, not two months, not three months, not four months, not five months, not six months, not seven months, not eight months but nine months after the EOI process had closed, they came to us”.
She and the mayor both said that, if they wrote speedway into the options now, it would be an abuse of the process and a breach of faith with the parties that followed the rules and submitted in good time. Doing that would encourage others, on any issue, to ignore the process too. Besides, it’s a statutory process, which means that, if they do it the wrong way, they can end up in court.
But they noted that the public input process will be open-ended. The council doesn’t have a preferred option and the WSSA will be free to put its proposals up under option 3b.
Councillor Alf Filipaina said: “The speedway will have the option. I have no doubt they will mobilise their community, and I hope they do.”
Legal action? The council is being taken to court anyway, by the WSSA, which has filed for a judicial review of the decision to end speedway at Western Springs.
WSSA’s lawyer, Bronwyn Carruthers KC, wrote to all councillors this week “advising them” to pause the plan for public consultation until the judicial review was complete.
But council officials advised against a delay. Senior executive Max Hardy said it was not desirable to delay public input on a matter of such strong public interest.
The council’s senior legal adviser, Meredith Webb, said she wanted to be “very clear” that her advice was to keep the process going.
“We recommend you go out and speak to Aucklanders about what they want to happen at Western Springs.”
Several councillors said they struggled to weigh the conflicting legal advice. Webb tried to explain to them that Carruthers had not provided them with “legal advice”.
The WSSA lawyer had not written the letter in the best interests of the council; she was representing her client. Carruthers was not impartially trying to explain the law; she was trying to get the councillors to do what WSSA wanted.
Surprisingly, even after the explanation, a handful of councillors did not seem to understand this.
And what of the options? The Western Springs Bowl proposal comes from groups that already use the site and would mean greatly improved facilities for them and their fans.
It’s a terrific location for concerts and there are no good alternatives for Ponsonby Rugby, unless the golf club at Chamberlain Park would like to give up half its space and become a nine-hole course. Just kidding.
As for the Auckland Arena, there are two ways to look at it. Councillor Mike Lee regards it, furiously, as a “hundred-year privatisation attempt”.
But around the world, it’s normal for sports club owners, not councils, to build new stadiums. And if the right environmental and other safeguards are in place, isn’t this a good way for the billionaires to spend their money?
So what if it’s on council land? They won’t be able to sell it. MWF is offering a gift to the city.
The council voted 12-9 not to add speedway to the options, 15-6 not to delay public consultation, and then 14-7 on the proposal to put the three options to the public.
Consultation will begin on May 19 and close on June 15. You can have your say at the council’s AKHaveYourSay website or in person at a “public engagement activity”. Meetings, open days - let’s see what they come up with.
The Eden Park Trust Board made its regular report to the council this week, complete with a video about how wonderful the new Eden Park 2.1 will be, once someone finds the $110m needed to get stage 1 built. And it made a $3.7m net operating profit last year.
Chief executive Nick Sautner spoke eloquently about the vital importance of 2.1 if the city is to attract more big entertainers and sports events. Rugby fans close to the action, but with seating that retracts for cricket fans to enjoy a perfect oval. A roof that comes and goes as required. But there’s no sign from the Government or council that the money will be found.
Eden Park is the council’s preferred option as our major stadium for the simple reason that it already exists, but Sautner is right: it’s not good enough as it is. A little reminder of that came this week with a new image of the abandoned stadium proposal for Wynyard Point. I gotta say I find it inspiring.
And I’d love to think the Mowbray-Williams-Foley crew do too. So far, only crude computer-generated images of their concept have been released. That needs to change. We need proper concept designs so we can see how good or bad their proposal really is.
Compare the two below.
Meanwhile, some bad news for stadiums and the city. The council’s events agency, Tātaki Auckland Unlimited, has pulled Auckland out of the quest to host the 2030 Gay Games, despite making it to a shortlist of three, because the necessary $10m in funding hasn’t materialised.
The lack of major events funding also has implications for the annual SailGP regatta, for which only one year of Sir Russell Coutts’ proposed six-year deal is assured.
It puts other annual events in jeopardy too, like the ASB Classic, Auckland Marathon and Auckland Writers Festival. Big one-off events like the Women’s Lions rugby tour in 2027, the ICC T20 Cricket World Cup in 2028 and the Men’s Lions tour in 2029 are all at risk.
In 2016, when Phil Goff became mayor, Auckland Council spent $28m on major events. He cut that in half, anticipating a new visitor levy, colloquially known as a bed tax, that would provide about $14m a year. But the tax didn’t happen.
Wayne Brown has cut major events funding right down to $7m, also anticipating a bed tax, but the Government still won’t allow it.
The Gay Games would have delivered close to 100,000 visitor nights and $20.8m of spending in the regional economy.
Brown is furious. “The Prime Minister says a culture of saying ‘No’ is holding New Zealand back and he’s talked a big game about ‘going for growth’,” he says. “But words are cheap.”
He points to a poll of 2000 Aucklanders his office commissioned last year from Curia Market Research, which found 64% support for a bed tax. Public feedback on his draft Annual Plan found much the same.
“Even National Party supporters want this.”
The Government has just appointed former National Party leader Simon Bridges to the Eden Park board. Perhaps he’ll be able to, ahem, bridge the gap between the council and Government on this.
Noticed all the tradie vehicles in the on-street parking of the central city? Those parks, according to the council, are supposed to be there for short stays by the general public.
Now the council has come to the tradies’ aid. It’s trialling a special offer at the very centrally located Victoria St Car Park, where tradies can pay a flat rate of $10 a day.
“This will make it easier for them to complete a job without having to worry about finding a suitable parking space, and at a reasonable price,” says the council. Ts and Cs apply.
May is Music Month
Music all over the place, all month long, in all the venues large and small and much of it on the streets. Time to check out old favourites and try something new?
Good for a laugh
For most of May, it’s also the NZ International Comedy Festival. There are big events like the Classic Comedy Fest Allstars and the Best Foods Comedy Gala, as well as a whole host of individual shows. Because who doesn’t need a good laugh right now?
Not at all funny
Next week is Rape Awareness Week. On Monday, HELP Auckland is staging a charity performance of the play Prima Facie, starring Cassandra Woodhouse and directed by Michael Hurst. It’s a powerful exploration of the barriers survivors face in the justice system and will be followed by an expert panel discussion on sexual violence, justice and change in Aotearoa.
So you know:
Prima Facie charity performance: Westpoint Performing Arts Centre, Western Springs, Monday May 5, 6pm.
To sign up to Simon Wilson’s weekly newsletter click here, select Love this City and save your preferences. For a step-by-step guide, click here.
Ex-members are speaking out en masse about the Two by Twos church. They explain why.