A History of QE Square

I needed to go into Auckland Council archives to get the real story on this contested piece of Auckland Open Public Space. It's not what I thought. And it's not what staffers thought when they prepared planning reports for the Road Stop hearing and Precinct Property's private plan change 79. Here's some edited highlights....Images are from presentations to hearing planning commissioners. This one's today.

Here's how the downtown area was in 1959. You can see it was a fine-grained piece of old Auckland. This posting shows shots of Little Queen Street. The frontage to Lower Queen Street - across the street from the CPO/Britomart railway station - was much the same.

Now for some archives. From the Town Clerk's files for Downtown. A selection tells the story of what happened. And how it happened. In this letter - which you can click and read yourself - the Auckland Harbour Board writes to Auckland City Council's mayor and councillors informing them of AHB plans to redevelop the whole of its reclaimed Downtown site bounded by Hobson, Quay, Lower Queen and Custom Street West. And of the fact it had advertised a prospectus internationally, seeking developers, and providing certain constraints which are described in page 3 of the letter...

These are that Sturdee Street and Little Queen Street would be closed, and that a "public square" would be provided opposite the CPO. Other detailed land use changes are listed. But the essence was to take Sturdee and Little Queen streets from Auckland City Council, and in return provide a public square across from the CPO.

Very shortly after writing to ACC, the AHB released a media statement to the NZ Herald containing images of the two planning schemes it had previously commissioned for the redevelopment. These are the Kennedy and Connor schemes. Both show civic squares opposite the CPO. Both also show significant public open space in the block now occupied by a hotel, the PWC building and the carpark building. Significantly, the Kennedy scheme shows a building on the site now occupied by the HSBC (initially the Air New Zealand tower), that is relatively small in footprint, and which conforms to the height control that applied to the land of 110 feet.

Here is the Connor Scheme as it was presented to the public in NZ Herald's story. NB: this story post-dates AHB's confidential letter to ACC which states that the only public space intended was the space opposite the CPO building.

The next few images are from an important internal ACC policy document prepared for the Town Clerk's office by the ACC's Dept of Works. It ends with an array of resolutions that were eventually adopted by Auckland City Council. My arrows indicate content of particular interest. This one kicks off the document. Its purpose is to obtain support in principle from ACC to AHB's downtown development scheme.

In particular AHB wants ACC to Stop Sturdee and Little Queen Streets. It explains that AHB is purchasing street access and land use rights from all those business owners that fronted onto those streets.

This map from the Town Clerk's office shows the pieces of road to be stopped - and notes all of the land titles that fronted onto Little Queen and Sturdee Streets.

Under the heading: Status of open spaces, council officers advise: "It is understood that the Board wishes to vest Queens Square in Council as a public space under agreement, or, alternatively, as a street over which a special agreement would apply to the use of this land and to the street furniture contained within it..."

The first arrow here refers, in essence, to the fact that the land area in Little Queen Street + Sturdee Street is greater than the land area in the proposed Queens Square.

The second arrow describes AHB's intention, "The scheme is so conceived and designed so that there are generous open public spaces and other amenities for the convenience of the public. These amenities include covered areas for the passage of pedestrians, covered area for bus terminii, and pedestrian malls which will ensure the safety of pedestrian traffic moving through the area...."

Under a heading in the report headed General is this bombshell, "The placement of the building, shown as office block no.1, in the plans submitted, in relation to the proposed Queens Square gives occasion for some concern because the shadow of this building will have a detrimental effect on the public enjoyment of this square...." I suggest you read the final paragraph yourself. Council officers had seen plans for what was proposed. They were concerned. The actual plans were not made public until two years later, when they were notified because they "departed from the district plan".

These are some of the recommended resolutions from this policy advice document.

Negotiations between AHB and ACC over the exact nature of the land swap and exchange arrangements proceeded in accordance with the resolutions. This Valuation Dept advice shows how the respective values of the pieces of land came into balance. Detailed documents indicate that Sturdee and Little Queen Street land was valued at 2 pounds per square foot, while Queens Square was deemed more valuable.

Interestingly, the Valuation Dept advice also notes and quantifies the increase in rates revenue that ACC will expect from the redeveloped land. As far as ACC was concerned this would be a significant financial benefit for it.

I suggest you also read (c) of special considerations. As far as Valuation were concerned, the closed streets don't owe ACC anything, because they got them "at no cost". What were they worth, however, as open public space?

This NZ Herald article reports ACC's decision to go ahead with the land exchange deal. You will see that the detail in the report accords with the numbers in the Valuation balance sheet shown above.

This advice from ACC's retained law firm Butler, White and Hanna, took a little bit of detective work to unravel. You can see that though ACC had resolved to agree the land exchange deal, there were statutory duties to discharge relating to the stopping of the two streets. The advice notes, "although unlikely, objections could be made to the closing of these two streets, and these objections might be upheld by a magistrate in which event the scheme would be held up for a period of at least two years...". BW&H suggest legislation to avoid this risk. They also note that legislation is going to be required anyway (what for...?) and that might present an opportunity for a package deal...

The fruits of my detective work answered the question. A Local Members Bill was successful in 1967. It dealt with two crucial issues. The first (in (2)) was to grant ACC the power to stop streets in the downtown area by public resolution. No need to go through a risky public notification process. The second (in (13)) took a little longer to figure out. Turns out that AHB had sold the freehold title to the developer of the Air New Zealand tower on Lot 1 in 22 November 1966. Problem was that at the time, Lot 1 contained a chunk of Little Queen Street which - at the time - was still owned publicly. Enactment of this Empowering Act validated that transaction. Made it legal later. Man oh man. It's not what you know....

This map shows how the subdivision was finalised in preparation for the whole AHB scheme development. It's a fact that after this subdivision was finalised, every building on this land was demolished. So were two fine-grained streets. The land was prepared for a modernist style redevelopment with towers and a civic square. Very important to remember that. Trying to put some aspect of that grain back - be it a laneway or an old style Lower Queen Street frontage - is inevitably in conflict with the urban form that was so dramatically established in the late 1960's. And which was designed into both the Kennedy and Connor schemes. It is also significant that the public square designed into both the Connor and Kennedy plans, and which survived in the Auckland Harbour Board plans, was the first Auckland CBD public square. Aotea Square was the next one. Auckland City Council planning has been slow to grasp, understand and embrace these opportunities.
 

Here's a closeup of the part of the downtown area that is up for redevelopment now. Only the HSBC and Zurich Towers will remain in place, and the land use scheme. Unless that is changed.

Finally the public become involved. You can read the date of the NZ Herald report. August 1968. Two years after Auckland City Council had the AHB plans for the Air NZ Tower. Two years after AHB had sold Lot 1 to its preferred developer. One year after Parliament validated that unlawful sale.

Turns out the proposed tower was 266 feet high, while the zoning allowed it to be 110 feet high. Council was in support. The public had 21 days to make its view known and to appeal Council's decision.

The Auckland Branch of the NZIA appealed, and later the Auckland Architecture Association appealed. This is a story that needs more detailed telling - based on the comments made at a recent meeting of the Urban Issues Group attended by a number of professionals who were involved and who have very detailed memories.

Reading the newspaper reports at the time, I sense that AHB media managers (with Auckland City Council in the background) held sway with NZ Herald. It pours scorn on the appellants (suggests NZ noses were out of joint because the AHB contract went to an Aussie firm). Even the PM's visit to turn the first sod had to be delayed. Shock, horror, scandal, probe!

For a variety of reasons the appeals were withdrawn. I understand that much of the information revealed here in this posting was not known to the architects and planners who mounted the challenge. They only had a short statutory period to mount their challenge and get support for it. Council and Harbour Board had carefully done their deal in the two years that led up to public notification.  

The Town Clerk's files contain other details about happened with Queen Square. This one, dated January 1973, records that the part of Lower Queen Street directly outside the CPO was declared "pedestrian mall". Plans for integrating Queens Square are also evident, and these also use the amenity yard that is the forecourt for No1 Queen Street (then AirNZ Tower, now HSBC tower). You can also see the bus turning plans from Galway and Tyler, that have returned to the current plans for bus movements in the area.

And then in April 1976, Queen Square was also declared pedestrian mall. And the whole area between the CPO and the downtown shopping centre was named Queen Elizabeth Square. This is the first reference I found for the name: Queen Elizabeth Square. Queen Square - as it was known for almost 10 years - makes up about half of Queen Elizabeth Square.

There are many reasons why this history is important. At the very least, if we don't learn from it, we're doomed to repeat the same mistakes.

We can make this space work better. It often takes time to get public spaces to work well. Aotea Square is going through a redesign now - triggered by changes to Council's civic building. It's been through previous redesigns. In my opinion, it won't be successful until more buildings that surround it are activated onto the public open space. Which is one of the urban design aspects that everyone agrees upon for Queen Elizabeth Square. I'm writing this in New York. Most of its civic squares are surrounded by tall buildings. It means that parts of the all of these squares are in shade for part of the day. It also means that sometimes they are windy, sometimes they are sheltered. Depends on the wind direction. Same is true for Queen Elizabeth Square in Auckland.

A year ago I modelled Queen Elizabeth Square without the the bus terminal that was imposed there, across the pedestrian mall, when the CPO was transformed into a railway station. Here are a few of images from that model.

The main thing that I've taken away is the bus interchange and through road which bisected the square's Pedestrian Mall status. The interchange includes a glass covered canopy above bus-shelters which also served as a sheltered walkway for people accessing ferry services from downtown. This is gone from my renderings because Auckland Council's plans are to re-locate the QE Square bus interchange. This will be done by expanding the Britomart bus interchange (behind the heritage CPO building which functions as the railway station), allowing buses to turn in and out of Galway and Tyler Streets, and constructing a new facility at the bottom of Lower Albert Street.

The key to transforming the feel of this space is to ensure that the ground floors of the rebuilt shopping mall are open to the square and activated, and the ground floor of the HSBC building (once it's lost its internal carpark floors) is also activated onto the square (onto the space where the Kauri trees are now). To sell Queen Square now would be to add insult to the injury that Auckland Harbour Board in cahoots with Auckland City Council inflicted on an unsuspecting Auckland Public almost fifty years ago. Now's the time to repair that urban damage and build a postcard civic space downtown.