It starts with sharing aspirations in an open forum.
Come and be part of the discussion, young or old-er.
Te Poari ā-Rohe o Waitematā
Waitematā Local Board
The 21 November & all hui agenda papers and minutes are HERE.
You can also watch recordings of past meetings HERE.
The November written members reports, are useful for that granular day to day view of members' activities, and the Resource Consent application updates are good info, if you like knowing what might be going up, or down or just modified, in the city centre.
At their 28 November Meeting the board approved their local consultation content for the 10-year Budget 2024-2034.
The next (last?) 2023 local board meeting is 12 December, at their 52 Swanson Street tari/office.
The panel has had a busy month, including providing feedback on the Mayor and councillors' direction for the 2024-34 Long Term Plan.
There are six particular areas of focus the panel would like to reinforce to the Mayor and Councillors for the next 10 years:
1. Improve community and visitor safety
2. Enhance the vibrancy and experience of the city centre.
3. Grow a thriving residential population with an aspirational growth target.
4. Develop the potential of the city centre as one of the world’s premier learning and innovation hubs.
5. Improve access into and around the city centre through integrated transport networks, capitalising
on the City Rail Link..
6. Increase climate resilience, parcularly through emissions reduction initiatives and adaption
measures (contained within Auckland’s Climate Plan).
IMAGE. Proposed city centre targeted rate investment portfolio 2024-31
Another important item was the City Centre Targeted Rate (CCTR) Portfolio update
The CCTR applies to business and residential land in the city centre area and is estimated to raise $25.7 million in the 2023/2024 financial year. The current end date 2031.
Business pays about 94%, and residents 6% of the CCTR.
(CCRG believe this no longer an equitable balance if we wish to grow and better support residents here).
This 'big small bus' is just 8.5m long and 2.35m wide, but it feels like a much larger vehicle and covers up to 460 km on a single charge.
As space is one of cities’ scarcest resources, mobility’s spatial footprint is increasingly an issue to be addressed.
We seem to be still (mostly) stuck in a one-size-fits-all approach, for our public transport, deliveries and emergency services.
If the Climate Action targeted rate is buying more buses, maybe prioirtise smaller electric shuttle buses that will support use of the CRL?
In the CCMP, a fine-grained service was imagined that could work on bollard-closed streets like High St.
City Centre Masterplan Progress
A Precinct Properties impression of part of the redevelopment providing for 'expansive public laneways and spacious internal courtyards, seamlessly connecting to Britomart (through Commercial Bay) and the Viaduct'.
This will add to the downtown laneway network as envisioned in the City Centre Masterplan, with more opportunities to connect with midtown in the future.
The CCMP-supporting proposals for the renewal of the area currently known as the downtown carpark, have been approved by council.
Supported by Council, the Local Board, the City Centre Advisory Board, climate champions, and people who understand cities and want progress here for city centre residents, (CCRG, naturally), another part of the widely consulted, and agreed CCMP moves forward.
CCRG tautoko the efforts, of all who supported this future-looking, and exciting development proposal - A new thriving neigbourhood in the city centre, bringing more people, (residents), visitors, vitality, and opportunity.
Wins for residents
Wins for business
Wins for climate action
Wins for transport options
Do you want to enjoy more of our city centre as a people-friendly, clean air, equity-enabling, safer neighbourhood?
The way we have managed our environment has exacerbated flooding and disaster risk.
The floods this year in the city centre showed that as much as anywhere.
We have buried all of our city centre streams underground, constrained and restricted their outlets, and created large impermeable surfaces.
What is the aproach we should be taking instead?
How can we make ‘room for rivers’, rather than just focus on water quality, quantity, and (expensive) flood protection engineering?
Join Forest & Bird's Freshwater Advocate, Tom Kay on December 6.
He will outline a new way of thinking about building resilience to climate change in our communities.
Approved in February 2018, this strategy aims to increase understanding of Auckland’s urban trees and use that knowledge to protect, grow and maintain trees and other vegetation in Auckland. The goal is to plant approximately 10,000 large trees annually.
The Waitematā Local Board has its own Urban Ngahere Action Plan (2019).
The City Centre, parks and private properties within the Waitematā local board area were not assessed unfortunately, and so don't have any such plan.
It would be good to have updated data as this is 2018, and we lost some 80 trees around the CRL works at Te Waihorotiu station. We still await news of where their replacements will be planted in the city centre.
The last section (between Shortland and Customs) is finished, and we are all experiencing the wonderful wider footpaths, active modes Waihorotiu path, lush greenery, and the general quieteness and pleasantness.
Need to cross the street to a shop? seen a neighbour you want to chat to? so easy now. The sounds of birds and people now predominate.
Thanks to the council and contractor team(s) who got this across the (oft-times tortuous) line, and got this section completed so quickly.
Parking Infringements for all of Queen St 1 July 2022 - 29 June 2023.
1.3 parking infringements per day for a 1.5km street over 1 year, and not just any street, seems...
These fees will certainly not be covering the yearly cost of even 1 AT enforcement officer.
Midtown street party is proving popular - Next one is Saturday 16 Dec – put it in the diary.
Time of Use Pricing Proceeds
Will congestion smooth out some of Auckland's peak traffic?
Good to see the Road Pricing/Time of Use Charging proposals progressing.
Call it what you like: congestion charging, time-of-use pricing, variable road pricing. It works.
In cities the world over, it is proven. And once road pricing schemes have been adopted, they have been almost universally embraced. They make our cities better.
In Auckland, there's already a successful time-of-use charge imposed on trucks using the port, dis-incentivising container traffic at rush hour.
Public Transport patrons already pay more to use the network at peak.
If fully implemented, and combined with improvements to public transport, this could see congestion reduce by around 8-12%.
The City Centre may be the first easily implemented and obvious area to have this applied.
CCRG FEEDBACK in 2021 was supportive, though with a caveat around managing impacts on city centre residents.
'Dutchify' Your City Centre Street
Woah this is a fun, super cool little AI tool - put your street in and get a new street!
Paris is one of today's great laboratories of traffic calming in cities.
They show great courage and ambition.
Paris has a new pedestrian plan.
”100 new hectares of pedestrian space, 100 additional "streets for kids," a commitment to #VisionZero with a focus on zero pedestrian deaths, and longer pedestrian cross times tailored for seniors.”
Perhaps you like going there with its truly merveilleux public transport, and support for kids, seniors, disabled, and active modes?
What say you, even just 10% of their ambition for our City Centre?
A Māori Figure in a Kaitaka Cloak Te Komititanga
Māori Figure with Katiaka Cloak. Molly Macallister.
The 4th move, hopefully the last
📸 ccrg
Molly Macallister's iconic 1967 bronze statute is finally at rest, on the ground as the artist requested.
It provoked controversy because it did not show its subject in a conventional idealised, and warlike stance. Instead, the 3-metre-high bronze figure, wearing a full-length korowai (cloak) and holding a mere (club), is evocative of dignity and nobility.
Macalister developed her ideas for the statue in consultation with Ngāti Whātua, who supported the final design.
Ātaahua.
Five years later Hone Tuwhare wrote a poem addressed to the statue, mixing Te Reo with everyday English.
This is one of 3 copies made of the original Maquette (small preliminary model). INFO
Remember this one in ex-QE square (now buried under Commercial Bay buildings)?
Te Ahi Kā is currently in storage. Council and Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei are working to reimagine the work, with an artist to be appointed shortly.
There will not be a gas flame element.
Delivery of Te Ahi Kā is anticipated for 2025.
Location not yet determined, but not Te Komititanga.
Queens Wharf
This must have the City Centre's most complicated ownership, management, license and occupation rights set up.
Music to our ears on Queens Wharf, from Eke Panuku Development Auckland CEO David Rankin:
”It's also a good chance for us to go back and just revisit where we go next with Queen's Wharf, which has sort of been compromised over time with a lot of stuff happening,” source
Tautoko, as various interests have carved out their own little bits of the wharf over the years, while awaiting (getting in before? - ed) the long-promised plan for QW, with more carve outs on the horizon.
We are expecting some positions on The Cloud by end of year according to Tātaki.
Let's Plan to remove the Cloud, in time for the Convention Centre opening, and plan and consult at the same time for the future of the wharf, and what we want it to achieve, and how.
No more piecemeal stuff please.
Vision and planning.
Give us the long promised plan for the wharf, before there are any further encroachments.
When the temporary construction shed is removed behind the Britomart/Waitematā station, there will be a new plaza.
This design emerged out of work done in 2019.
Although currently zoned 'open space', the station plaza has been identified as a potential future development site.
Not the only bit of significant heritage demolished decades ago, to become a surface car park.
Is is time to review how rates are raised?
We are quite familiar with empty lots in the city centre - usually used as surface car parks.
It hardly seems to be the best use of such valuable land.
One way of 'dis-incentivising' such use is via land value rates.
Common Ground Aotearoa gave this snappy PRESENTATION to the Governing Body.
Google Maps have updated their 3D imagery for Auckland. The new imagery is still a year or two old - but it now has Commercial Bay, Pacifica, Voco, the bottom third of Seascape
from a resident
The burden of reporting every single problem or issue in the city centre by residents has to shift to the responsibility of proactive monitoring and action by Council.
The Night Time Economy (NTE)
Sounds catchy and exciting doesn't it?
And we support a 24/7 economy.
After all, the excitement, vibrancy, with a bit of grit, is why (most) of us live here. However, in order to make a resident-friendly city of 100,000 (aspirational vision - ed) that welcomes kids, elderly, and everything in between, more needs to be done to support residents.
There is a lack of enforcement around exisiting rules to effectively support the agreed bylaws.
And no centralised way of dealing with those proactively. Instead we have decentralised silos, which makes reporting, and better still, getting action, a truly night-time-nightmare for most of us.
Council appears to be prioritising developing the NTE before it resolves all the many, varied and well- known issues that residents have with night (and day) time activities.
To CCRG this is backwards.
Identify the barriers that block the develpment of a city centre with 100k residents. Then use that to inform any NTE plans.
100 K residents will support the businesses with our 24/7 presence.
What's good for residents is good for everyone.
Residents really are the canary in the mine.
And until residents are centred before the needs of a night time economy, we will end up in the same old spiral of ongoing pain.
Public Transport to run later?
AT currently runs 30+ bus routes, 4 train lines and 12 ferry routes to/through the city centre, 7 days a week (map, timetables).
Around 2,500 passengers board bus, train and ferry services from here every weekday after 9pm.
Saturday sees around 3,000 passengers board, and
Sundays around 1,500 passengers board after 21:00. So, around 875,000 boardings per year on PT services from the city centre after 9pm.
In addition to the exisiting Night Bus services, bus route improvements are expected in the city centre between 2025-28.
This would support some residents who rely on PT to get in and out of the city centre, for night or shft work, (as well as the night time economy).
Rail services:
Following CRL opening, services are expecting to run later into the evening, particularly on Sunday – Thursday.
From next year, you will be able to tap onto a bus, train, or ferry using using payWave, Apple, Google Pay, contactless debit and credit cards in addition to their current HOP card, to travel on public transport.
Identified in the 2022 Residents' Survey as highly important issues to residents, we do have monthly air quality reports from a very limited number of sensors (2), but there are no noise reports available, as this is not measured at all.
Air pollution is a significant environmental hazard, posing a severe risk to human health.
Auckland city centre has the highest/worst air pollution measurements across Auckland and AoNZ.
In Auckland, air pollution was responsible for 939 premature deaths in 2016, and the social cost of PM2.5 and NO2 air pollution was estimated at $4.45 billion. Air pollution has a detrimental impact on the atmosphere and climate, as some pollutants have warming and cooling properties, contributing to climate change.
There are only two city centre monitoring sites, Customs St West and Queen St (the latter being on top of an awning, so the pedestrian level readings would likely be worse).
They consistently have the worst levels for Auckland for all the air poluutants measured. The readings for the fine particles of carcinogenic Black carbon on Customs St are alarming.
City centre sites have recorded the highest levels of NO2 concentrations: 58% up on the previous year.
We need more sites monitored in the city centre. The highly residential Hobson/Nelson streets, Beach Road/Tangihua, K rd, and more.
CCRG would like to see the roll out of the smart sensors proposed in this excellent 2019 Council presentation to the City Centre Advsiory Board.
We suggest AT start by installing a smart sensor on Wellesley street, where the number of diesel buses, probably double deckers, will increase (to more than 200+ buses per hour) once CRL opens, (which is in itself a truly perverse proposal after spending $5-6 billion on underground rail).
That will mean more diesel fumes, more black carbon from tyres and brakes, more noise, more particulates, more of everything unhealthy for people living here.
High Street Parking Changes LGOIMA- A rather sorry tale of how not to progress change, with the added intrigue of CCRG's misplaced feedback.
A step backwards.
A (big) step forward.
On the headland area at Wynyard point.
We think it looks pretty amazing.
CCRG tautoko the thoughtful, positive, and collaborative approach for these proposals that are realistic, aspirational, sobering, and yet hopeful.
It fully meets the vision and intent of the City Centre Masterplan, and the ambitions of our agreed climate plans.
It certainly mightily supports and enhances residential living and amenity.
And another bit of water's edge re-opened to the public. The area where the Americas cup (remember that?) bases were, is now open to the water, as the new edge barriers are in.
This bit is called Wynyard Wharf, as it forms part of that long wharf north to the Waitematā.
A fascinating album of images has emerged from Anita Corcoran and her father Jim's album.
Jim was stationed here with the US Naval Construction Maintenance Unit 501 (Seabees).
The City Centre, CCRG & Residents in 2024
CCRF will continue to focus on progressing our agreed Vision Statements, the CCMP, as well as the three focus areas identified in the 2022 Residents Survey:
Safety
Noise
A feeling of community - growing neighbourhoods
We will be counting to consistently prioritise residents in order to fulfil City Centre Action Plan Focus area #3:
Supporting residential growth in the city centre:
'The benefits of a larger residential population in the city centre are well understood,... In the immediate future, we will focus on supporting existing residents, as well as ensuring we have a clear plan to support residential growth in the medium to longer term'.
The Vertical Voice November
More Residents' Perspectives
Plants telling stories
National Poetry Slam Finals
That “being alone in the midst of the crowd” type feeling
Survey on Neighbourhood Housing and Health in Ethnic Migrant Communities
Do your Christmas shopping a different way
There's too many Christmassy Happenings on in te pokapū tāone for us to cover - you know where to go to find what you need, but don't forget Xmas in the (Aotea) Square.
And Heart of The City and K Road always have up to date Happenings.
