Wynyard Quarter Commercial Pressure Shows

Up till now the ARC and the public have been enjoying some wonderful design work from the team of urban designers working for Sea + City on the public areas of Wynyard Quarter. Silo Park. North Wharf. Fantastic spaces. But last week ARC councillors got a taste of what could be happening in the commercial spaces. We had a look at some draft drawings of Precinct 1. That's the area outlined in this image.

As you can see, the area of Precinct 1 includes the purplish residential buildings to the right with activated street edges in red (these are as they appear in Plan Change 4 - no surprises here). The dark blue are the fish industry and market Sanfords buildings. While the orange blocks fronting Jellicoe Street are likely to be for the ASB headquarter building.

Artist's depictions of that building have been published before today. I reproduce them here. These are on the footprint of the orange blocks in precinct 1.

Here's a closer picture of the orange blocks. The details to look at include the blue floors (at levels 2 and 3), and the yellow section between the two orange blocks.

Here's those blocks again, looked at from ground level in those draft drawings. We were advised that the yellow blocked out area wasn't a roof - as such - - but could be. Could be an atrium. Could be skywalks between the blocks. And could also be car accessways - maybe even carparks in the levels 2 and 3. Because it turns out rhe blue levels are carparking. Could be sleeved at Jellicoe Street frontage. This was a concern. The residential blocks all have 2 levels of basement parking. Why doesn't this building? Question-mark?

The covered laneway was a big concern for me. This image here was one I made for the submission I presented to Plan Change 4 Commissioners. It shows the building envelopes that were allowed in the Plan Change, and how they make the Sanfords building look insignificant. But they also show the laneway along the street between the taller building blocks.

In my submission I showed this picture illustrating how Auckland City does its laneways just up the road off Nelson Street. Great amenity don't you think? Activated edges. Great pedestrian amenity. Is this the sort of thing we want in Wynyard Quarter? I don't think so. And especially not a laneway that's turned into a tunnel.

Here's a good example of a laneway. It's from the Chancery development out onto a street in Auckland City. High quality and attractive pedestrian accessway, good edges, safe walking. We need this sort of attention to detail in the laneways fronting onto Jellicoe Street on Wynyard Quarter. And it would be appropriate for buildings there to have basement carparks. Its cheap and nasty to have them above ground, fronting to street, and forcing buildings to be higher as a consequence.