The council’s City Centre Integration Group (CCIG) – the team charged with turning all of the various visions and plans for the city centre into a reality – are wanting the council to endorse their strategy for the city’s Central Wharves which will see some significant changes to how the wharves are used. The central wharves are essentially the finger wharves that jut out into the harbour and include Princes Wharf, Queens Wharf, Captain Cook Wharf and Marsden Wharf.
It was first signalled that CCIG were looking at the wharves in the Downtown Framework in September last year and at the time they said more work needed to be done to make the best use of the space.
Before going into the proposal some background. The core issue the strategy is trying to address is growth that’s expected to occur in ferries, cruise ships, public space/events and freight. All of those cause congestion not just on land but also on the water too. More specifically on each:
- Ferries – They say ferry patronage and the number of ferries plying the harbour are expected to grow by around 50% over the next decade. That means more space is needed for ferries and even if the location is left where it is will also need to be reconfigured to handle those extra volumes.
- Cruise Ships – The number of cruise ships visiting keeps increasing and along with that the cruise ships themselves are getting bigger. They say there’s now a need to be able to accommodate 350m long vessels (Queen Mary 2 which has visited a few times is 345m long and has had to tie up at the freight wharves). That means to keep cruise ships here one or more of the finger wharves need to be extended. This is also apparently not just important for Auckland but for NZ as a whole as if ships can’t stop in Auckland they won’t visit elsewhere in NZ either. It’s also not just the cruise ships themselves but also all of the provisioning that goes along with that. As an example they say one ship carrying 3,000 people on a 7-day cruise needs 6,500kg of fish, 26,500kg of meat, 27,500 of fruit & vegetables and 17,000 litres of milk that all need to be loaded aboard. To add one more issue the cruise ships generally like to leave port right in the afternoon peak when the ferries are at their busiest putting added pressure on that water space.
- Public Space – All of the council’s plans call for the waterfront to become more accessible and friendly to the public. Queens Wharf was brought from the ports ($40 million) for exactly this reason. Of course because Queens Wharf is also used for cruise ships it becomes anything but publicly accessible during many days in summer – just when people most want to use it. The image below highlights one of the problems with much of the wharf effectively closed off to the public.
- Freight – Captain Cook and Marsden wharves are currently used by the port for the storage of bulk goods and primarily imported cars – many of which eventually head out of Auckland. The ports obviously want to continue and grow that. I’m not convinced that the storage of large bulk items like cars is necessarily the best use such prime waterfront land.
- Other – In addition to the uses above there’s also increasing demand for use of various wharves by tourist operators and by the marine sector in relation to super yacht visits.
Moving back to the Downtown Framework, the document suggested four possible future scenarios for the uses of the central wharves. As part of the strategy that was expanded to six options. All options involve the extension of Halsey Wharf at Wynyard and the need to retain the ability for cruise ships at Princes wharf for when there are three in town at once. Further all but one involve the removal of Marsden Wharf. The six options that were evaluated were:
- An extension to Queens Wharf, operationally it would be the same as what we have now.
- Shifting the Ferry terminal to Captain Cook Wharf which would see Queens Wharf dedicated to cruise ships and still be the public space too.
- Extending Bledisloe Wharf substantially with enough space for two large cruise ships end to end.
- Extending Captain Cook Wharf and shifting all cruise operations there. They say it would also require some wharf extension and reclamation for Bledisloe Wharf which the port claim is needed to compensate for almost 3ha lost from no longer having access to Captain Cook and Marsden Wharves.
- A shorter extension of Bledisloe Wharf with cruise ships shared between there and Queens Wharf
- An extension of Princes Wharf to handle longer ships and retaining the use of Queens Wharf.
This list was then narrowed down to options 1, 3 and 4. The remaining options were then evaluated on a range of criteria and compared in a matrix. Unfortunately I currently only have a low quality paper copy of this until the presentation goes online however it is clear from it that option 1 was by far the worst with option 4 the best.
Option 4 is shown below.
CCIG say the benefits of this option is it enables two new public spaces either side of Queens Wharf (the breastworks between Princes and Queens would be extended). These areas would be the replacement for public space lost from the sale of QE2 square. Queens Wharf would become dedicated to people use or for events along with a reconfigured ferry terminal with 12 end loading berths. The downside in my view is the extension of Bledisloe Wharf. I get the feeling that the Ports of Auckland are trying to use whatever methods they can to get extensions happening.
An idea of what Admiralty Basin could look like
Incidentally I and many others have been saying that Captain Cook is the best location for the cruise ship terminal for some time. The last time it came up it was suddenly shot down by Len Brown before it could be investigated.
The one big unknown in all of this is just what it will cost. I can’t see the extension of Captain Cook wharf being cheap nor the works to improve the waterfront for more people space. I also can’t see the councillors being all that supportive of a strategy that endorses the extension of Bledisloe Wharf but we’ll have to wait to see till Thursday.