Design alternatives to (pre-selected) bridge not canvassed by DCC

GOODBYE to Rattray St VIEW Shaft from Queens Gardens to the waterside.

HELLO to other serious impediments to unique and very significant harbourside cultural heritage and landscape values at the planned city.

Here is another DCC-inspired critically dead PLONK OBJECT.
An overhead rail bridge. Who gains.

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DCC files: Harbourside connector Rattray Fryatt Streets [click to enlarge]

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It looks innocuous, nothing to scare the horses. A simple sling over the tracks at an estimated a cost of “about $3 million”.

What’s the fuss? Ahhh well.
The history of political deception through use of loose architectural sketches is tied (here as anywhere) to DCC departmental reports and estimates that hardly ever approximate REAL cost. Multiply by two.

Then the idea that the “hotel” is back on the drawing boards, if not a screw-us invitation to Asian investment for the south side.

By all means let’s escalate this (an idea) – the tame little cheapie bridge (pictured above, significantly downplayed structurally as a pencil mark) is another potential rort in the grand family of Council rorts that includes the Stadium*, Centre for High Performance Sport*, Carisbrook*, Dunedin Town Hall Redevelopment*, Citifleet*, City Forests*, Delta investments (severally)*, Cycle Network et al, and very probably the proposed Mosgiel pool if it gains traction for Taieri property speculators. For each, an independent forensic audit isn’t out of the question – for ratepayer ‘information’ that could depose the Council in favour of a Commissioner, presupposing later redress at Court. Visit resort to the *Crimes Act. Now, there’s a ‘visitor strategy’ for Dunedin !!

Meekly, more circumspectly (after all, it was just an idea, a stretch), those of us trained in architectural rendering and graphics as well as contemporary design philosophy of the marketplace know the tricks intimately; we’re not above exploiting them for a quick buck and a further string of new jobs by secret handshake.

Lucky for some, each deal at Dunedin (with links to Queenstown and Auckland if via Christchurch lawyers and accountants) can be sown up by a very small number of predatory boys. The same list we’ve had on our backburner books tracing the Stadium debacle —beginning to rise apparent at the ODT front page of Friday, 22 May 2015. An intriguing warning shot.

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But is this right ? Has Dunedin City Council been wowed by just one bridge proposal ? Has DCC in the first place only ever been looking for a bridge —not seeking opportunities for alternatives, such as a designer underpass or an immediately legible automatically controlled crossing at grade, for light vehicle transit as well (shared roads) ?

It’s pretty poor and conflicting if Dunedin City councillors and senior council management have indeed sold out (under a red-carpeted table) to a lone solicited vision of an overhead bridge UNTESTED BY PROFESSIONAL COMPETITION – another signature WHITE model, to augment those other visions in WHITE for ORC sites at the Steamer Basin —nicely, satisfyingly calculated by that little list of club players.

It’s not hard to imagine that this mere slip of a concrete and steel flyover, is an “enlightenment” carrying the City re-brand. A cause célèbre for ego-fired DCC infidels and speculator man-pals. The very people who can’t bear to endure sage, conservative, long-term economic modelling for Dunedin, taking the city and region through 10 to 50 years of solid management to ensure business diversity and job creation. No, they prefer ad hoc spurts and short-term squander plans (how manly, even when couched as the soft-illustrated 2011 Central City Plan FFS).

Where, for this crossing, is the city council’s reasonably time-lined, broadly advertised, professional design competition with clearly expressed intent to utilise open tendering methods for architectural design, engineering and construction ??

TO SAVE US FROM COI’S AND RORTS.

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The Otago Daily Times has learned the bridge is among only a few New Zealand projects vying for the next allocation from the Urban Cycleway Fund.

### ODT Online Thu, 28 May 2015
Bridge on funding short list
By Chris Morris
A multimillion-dollar bridge linking Dunedin’s inner city and waterfront has been short-listed for Government funds. […] An announcement is expected next month, and, if successful, the bridge could be considered for construction over the next three years.
Read more

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

Dunedin Hotel (apartments): Who ARE the developers?

“I’m pretty sure that Ping and Jing and the developers want some conclusions too … they don’t want to be still working through this in six months’ or a year’s time.” –Mayor Cull (ODT)

An interesting statement – any names? Who are the developers? All we heard in evidence, name-wise (not fully explained), was the source of the building plans at China (“tweaked” by some unimaginative pasty sell-out hailing from Auckland).
In the argybargy over resource consent Jing Song always came across as a naive young woman (of potential wealth) with no real idea of how she was being used by the circling sharks of Dunedin and elsewhere.
Despite fronting at hearing she certainly had no idea about the standard of information required for the application process, seemingly duped by legal advisers to play dumb, who maybe weren’t that clear either. The youthful husband never turned up.
Still, “they” might surprise us with something that is well designed and sensitively scaled —but that would cost. To be erected in Queenstown or Christchurch. Given the state of our airport and its relative disconnection with the country’s major international gateways, would it be any wonder.

Image: Jing Song, left, and Ping Cao were married at the Grand Mercure Nelson Monaco resort (Nelson Mail, 10.9.11) Story via stuff.co.nz.

How much has DCC spent on schmoozing the ‘wealthy’ Chinese?
Any New Zealand finance going in (to the ‘university hostel’)?

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### ODT Online Tue, 7 Jan 2014
Talks on hotel bid ongoing
By Chris Morris
The fate of Dunedin’s proposed $100 million waterfront hotel hangs in the balance, but a decision on whether to proceed – or abandon the project – could be just weeks away, it has been confirmed. Dunedin Mayor Dave Cull told the Otago Daily Times all parties were working to address “complex” issues but he could offer no guarantees a way forward could be found.
Read more

To learn more, enter the term *hotel* in the search box at right.

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

Harbourside: Access to a revamped Steamer Basin has public backing

Liability Cull is not 100% correct. So what’s new.

The ‘harbourside’ public consultation, including pre-plan change workshops, picked up good support for IMPROVED public access to the waterline (note, via a reinstated Rattray Street rail crossing at grade) and a REVAMPED Steamer Basin.

WE HAVE BEEN ROBBED.
Cull says the harbourside plan change was a mistake. It most surely was not a mistake! The proposed plans for how the plan change would be articulated in the area were the problem. Nearly everyone wanted historic industrial sheds and wharf sheds to remain and be redeveloped sympathetically with respect to heritage values, enhancing the land-water connection. Unfortunately, and fortunately, the Otago Chamber of Commerce with five partners appealed the plan change decision, significantly dashing the intents and purposes of the “vision”. Nonetheless, this shouldn’t stop future redevelopment of the ‘edge’ at the Steamer Basin, for greater community recreational use, with some commercial opportunities built in. We still haven’t got walk-on/walk-off access for the cruising yachts heading to subantarctic waters —embarrassing.

OK DCC’s broke at the moment, but ORC…

Cull – Crash one (PC-7), get bent on inviting the real mistake… the $100m tombstone apartment and hotel complex at 41 Wharf Street, with all inherent costs to Dunedin ratepayers and residents. That’s where Cull stands, nowhere good. Not even close.

█ Plan Change 7 – Harbourside

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### ODT Online Mon, 21 Oct 2013
Harbour project labelled mistake
By Chris Morris
Pursuing a vision of harbourside redevelopment in Dunedin has so far cost the city’s ratepayers more than $2.6 million, it has been confirmed. The revelation, prompted by Otago Daily Times inquiries, has led the Otago Chamber of Commerce to label the Dunedin City Council’s ”grandiose” plan a mistake. It has also prompted Dunedin Mayor Dave Cull, who was an early critic of the proposal, to suggest it should never have got off the ground.
Read more

DCC’s habourside costs – $2.6m (via ODT)
• Legal costs – $401,660
• Settlement – $200,000
• Other costs – $315,633
• Capital costs – $1,697,192
• Total – $2,614,485

Capital costs of $1,697,192 comprising:
• 2005-06 – purchase of 20 Thomas Burns St – $497,500
• 2011-12 – purchase of 30 Thomas Burns St – $1,199,692

NZHPT Dunedin Harbourside Historic Area

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Related Posts and Comments:
3.8.13 SH88 notice of requirement
21.4.13 ‘Yellow Balloon’ —Blue Oyster invitation to (TOWER) Submitters et al
9.4.13 Dunedin: Future service town to Shell? #realitycheck
24.9.12 Stadium Councillors back coastal oil exploration
16.5.12 Dunedin Hotel
● 26.10.11 Dunedin Harbourside: DCC “caved”
17.12.10 HARBOURSIDE Announcement
17.4.10 Harbourside: more negotiation to come
16.4.10 DCC Media Release – Harbourside Stage Two
13.4.10 Dunedin – an oil base?
1.4.10 DCC Media Release – Harbourside
27.3.10 Withdraw proposed Harbourside plan change in its entirety!
18.3.10 Otago Chamber of Commerce campaigns for harbourside
18.3.10 Dunedin harbourside for oil base?
10.3.13 Plan Change 7: Harbourside – remove stage two
9.3.10 Plan Change 7: Harbourside
5.3.10 Plan Change 7 – Dunedin Harbourside
26.2.10 Latest on Dunedin’s offshore oil and gas prospects
13.2.09 HOT PRESS – Dunedin Harbourside Zone

█ For more, enter the terms *loan and mercantile*, *harbourside*, *hotel*, *balloon*, *shell*, *anadarko* or *SH88* in the search box at right.

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

ODT: Piece of maritime history moved
Another lost opportunity cut in half — Te Whaka at Birch St Wharf
Image: norsetroll.blogspot.com

Reykjavik, Iceland: The strongest mirror [speculative apartments]

I missed it – the Otago Polytechnic press release of Thursday 21 March.

Icelandic Activist To Speak At Dunedin School Of Art
Iceland democracy activist and artist Hordur Torfason will be speaking at Otago Polytechnic’s Dunedin School of Art on Wednesday the 27th of March, as part of a series of nationwide talks on modern democracy. cont.

By chance, at morning coffee a friend mentioned the speaking event and offered a ride there. Well. Not one speaker, but two —good fortune doubled. All Dunedin residents should have downed tools, pots and pans to attend.

The two men from Iceland, Hordur Torfason and life partner Massimo Santanicchia, each delivered a session, with Santanicchia up first. They shared intriguing, calm, sensible statements about their lives and work, about the quality and countenance of human social interaction, within a gripping exposé of the capitalist drain and the peaceful revolution that occurred in their financially devastated homeland — with thoughts to urbanism, greed, discrimination, corruption, property speculation, sick governance, economic collapse, human rights, the lobby power of silence, noise and internet, and the Icelandic people’s hard-won solidarity for change.

A compelling two-hour glimpse at a nation losing and finding itself.

Iceland’s capital city, Reykjavik, is the strongest of mirrors held to Dunedin’s glaring errors of recent and pending ‘big’ construction, economic blunders, and forces of business and political corruption – in turn, Dunedin reflects our nation’s wider political and economic struggles.

[Dunedin, we’re not crippled yet… but New Zealand? Blind rhetoric.]

Proposed hotel and apartment building, Dunedin (ODT Online, 21 Dec 2012)

Derelict Reykjavik highrises

While on our photowalk today we passed these buildings on the sea front. I thought they were just another apartment building until I noticed that the balconies were fenced in by planks of wood held together loosely!
Donncha O Caoimh (9 March 2012)

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Originally from Perugia, Italy, Massimo Santannichia graduated from the School of Architecture in Venice in 2000 and holds an MA from the Architectural Association, School of Architecture in London, and an MSc in Urban Studies from the London School of Economics. He has been working as an architect and urban designer in Italy, the UK and Iceland. Over the last decade he has come to know Reykjavik intimately. Essentially an outsider in the tightly knit Icelandic society he has survived the downturn by moving from the firm Arkitektur to a plethora of internationally connected activity – delivering courses at the Iceland Academy of Arts since 2004 and coordinating projects and workshops with organisations such as the International Peace and Cooperation Centre and the Architectural Association.

Santanicchia’s research interests include relations between the ecological, physical, social and economical aspects of cities. He has lectured extensively on the subject of sustainable cities and small scale urbanism in Zurich, Athens, Oslo, London, Venice, Riga and Reykjavik.

Santanicchia, second from right (AA Summer School promo for July 2013)

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The Production of Space: The lesson from Reykjavik

According to Santanicchia, small cities (less than 500,000 inhabitants) host fifty-two per cent of the world’s urban population, yet they are profoundly neglected in the urban studies field. His presentation at the School of Art focused on the small city of Reykjavik (118,326 inhabitants), investigating how the planning system is trying to build a new urban strategy away from the world city model which was adopted until the banking collapse of 2008.

Reykjavik, Iceland – vernacular housing (trekearth.com)

Commodifying the view…
In particular, Santanicchia noted Reykjavik’s receipt of its first ‘tall buildings’, a crop of extraordinarily bleak apartment developments set against the vernacular lowrise, 3-4 storeyed townscape, blocking existing residential views of the coastline – through to (now dead) speculative drive-to malls and commercial buildings [‘build it and they will come’] further problematised by the profound lack of public transport and infrastructural support to the (then) ‘new phase’ of development.

Throughout the commentary, the physical and moral contradictions were purposefully illustrated by well-selected slides, quotations, and use of statistics. Santanicchia’s creative and socio-political approach to what ails, and demonstrations of how to foster community investment in sustainable environment, is the busy-work of a contemporary intellectual with a warm humanity, grounded in the discipline of practical economics working for the public good.

He and students have won grants to set ‘in place’ temporal urban interventions that sample ways forward for the local community, utilising vacant and degraded public places; demonstrating creative re-design / re-forming of the opportunities lost to the blanket of capitalist-grey asphalt – making places that create “trust” between institutions and among people.

Reykjavik’s dislocated waterfront (‘reconnection’ project work)
[This work is very similar to that of Gapfiller in post-quake Christchurch.]

Copy of Santanicchia’s presentation slides and readings will be made available through Professor Leonie Schmidt (Head, Dunedin School of Art).

A few points he made along the way, from my notes:

● When “priority is given to economic development” …. the city becomes all about ‘building envelope’, ‘the city as a series of volumes’ (bulk and location) | “Management of the economy is not a city, is not urban planning.”

● In 2008, Iceland’s economy shrank 90%. The economy devalued by more than 100% in one week. 1000 people emigrated which kept unemployment low.

● “Big-fix” solutions don’t work in a small city.

● The DANGER of “one idea” …. “it is NOT a plurality”.

● “The WORST is what was built.” Flats and parking lots. No public transport. No sharing. 7000 apartments at Reykjavik are redundant. 2200 properties have been acquired by the banks.

● “The WORST neighbourhoods were created in the richest years.”

● The government didn’t protect the weakest. “The architecture failed because it placed itself at the service of political and economic interests with very little regard for social interests.”

● (Jane Jacobs, 1984): “The economic model doesn’t provide niches for people’s differing skills, interests and imaginations, it is not efficient.”

● (Aldo Rossi): “Building a city is a collective effort.” [empower the people]

● Post-crash, Iceland’s birthrate has increased and children are happier.

● “Trust is about participation.” Better institutions, social justice, equity and public/private relationships.

● Zurich: They used 4 hot air balloons to indicate the height and bulk of a proposed tower development, prior to public submissions being received on the proposal.

[In evidence, at Dunedin, applicant Betterways Advisory said it couldn’t afford to provide a height indicator at 41 Wharf St – all the cranes were in Christchurch (wrong), and where do you get balloons from anyway, it asked…. Mr Rodgers (Betterways), we know, took his mother-in-law ballooning in Germany recently. Perhaps he could’ve made a stopover in the Mackenzie Country on his way home.]

### architecturenow.co.nz 25 Mar 2013
Massimo Santanicchia visits New Zealand
By Stephen Olsen
Auckland’s Wynyard Quarter has won high praise from Reykjavik-based architect Massimo Santanicchia for the “observable scaffolding” it is providing for an area in transition.
Santannichia knows a thing or two about making waterfront spaces more accessible from sparking a design revival at the harbour’s edge of the world’s northernmost capital last year, within the context of an award-winning programme known as the Meanwhile projects.
Santanicchia has also been drawing audiences to hear his views on the ways in which Iceland’s largest city is embracing a more human scale of urbanism in the wake of the financial crash.
Read more

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Hordur Torfason followed with a punchy impassioned delivery, spoken with a run of crowd scenes and peaceful protest images repeating behind him. Describing post-crash Reykjavik as a scene of ferment and healing, Torfason took us through specific mechanisms for the peaceful revolution that has worldwide and local application – hear that, Dunedin.

Shortly, Torfason will head to workshops in Cypress. The following interview (2011) covers the gist of his lecture.

A multi-talented individual, he told his story from the age of 21 (1966), of how he grew the personal confidence and expertise (“proving talent”) to lead the people of a city and a nation to overturn the Icelandic Government and jail the bankers. He said Parliament has almost lost ‘all respect amongst all Icelanders’. Nevertheless, there’s a bill in passage to make Iceland a Safe Haven for journalists, whistleblowers, international media – protected by law.

● He maintains the role of the artist is to criticise, that criticism is a form of love: “We have to use reason, cultural roots, feelings and the precious gifts of life – our creativity”, to ensure human rights aren’t undermined by economic growth and politics.

● “It’s about learning every week, every day, new sides of corruption,” he said. “Inequality is a tool for extortion, a way to maintain The System.”

● Inequality won’t be removed by conventional systems: “If you want to move a graveyard, don’t expect the inhabitants to help you.”

● “The internet has to be protected to dislodge the monster.”

● “One big party owns one big newspaper for Iceland.” According to that paper there was no crash.

● The key word is AWARENESS. The silence of government was upsetting to the people; it meant the people used silence as a mirror to the government and politicians, to protest their rights. The cohesiveness and cleverness of the protest, the silent revolution, achieved 100% success. “They the media won’t tell you [the rest of the world] about it.”

● “Stick together and use the internet.” Make Plan A, B, C, D, E. Protest by peaceful revolution v Arrogance.

● Just 25 people from around the world are responsible for the crash, and one of them was the leader of Iceland’s national bank.

Hordur Torfason by Juan Carlos Monedero (June 2011)

### grapevine.is August 4, 2011
You Cannot Put Rules On Love
An Interview With Hordur Torfason by Paul Fontaine

“I tell people, ‘I’m not demonstrating. I’m fighting for a better life.’ I think aloud, ask questions, seek answers. I knew there was corruption in this country. But I never thought in my wildest dreams that the banks would crash. We have been told lie after lie after lie, and people just accept them. They say ‘þetta reddast’ [‘it’ll all work out’], until it affects them personally, and then they come screaming.”

The 2008 economic collapse of Iceland would send Hordur’s life path in a whole new direction—one that would take him beyond the bounds of even his own country.
Read more

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr