By Stuart Niven, reposted from Scoop August 31, 2026
I may have some deep, symbiotic affiliation with Jeanne d’Arc, that doomed French martyr who pushed against the tide until it engulfed her. But I’m going to go there anyway as Wellington is about to be forced to decide on something dumb that makes no civic sense at all. So – possibly harbouring my version of that same martyr complex – I feel compelled to cry STOP! probably to the same practical effect as that lone French voice.
I can’t blame our City Council – not really – tangled up as they are in a funding trap created by the twin evils of “delayed infrastructure maintenance” (that’s “water” to you) and that other black hole of funding – and thought – our exposure to the half-truths of earthquake protection and its unchallenged and unconscionable costs.
Civic poverty has many parents, so it’s also the victim of a government – possibly in its dying days – who self-righteously is determined to lock New Zealand’s Local Governance into a funding straightjacket with a rates cap – which, after all, is just another form of poverty – this time of thought.
So where does this poverty – self-created and imposed – lead us?
To a pragmatic funding decision our Council is about to make – that will strangle the richness of our story telling about ourselves as a maritime city by putting it in the wrong place.
I refer, of course, to the story of the Bond Store on Queen’s Wharf………what you may have thought was the settled and evocative home of our stories as a harbour city…………….WRONG.
You see, the Bond Store requires further earthquake strengthening – that tediously bottomless pit of expenditure – despite it being the first threatened building in the city to be base isolated, what we’ve always understood as the gold standard of earthquake protection.
But, at the time this was done, there apparently wasn’t the money available to complete all the identified structural measures to ensure the building isn’t shaken to bits if “the big one” descends on us.
So out of civic necessity and a surfeit of risk aversion we now face this funding bullet: to bite it or manage it? – that is the question.
Pragmatism – so often a virtue when it comes to civic thinking – this time doesn’t serve us so well as it is about to lead us down the mistaken – if understandable – path of prudence.
Where, it is asked, do we have a Council-owned building – already fully earthquake strengthened, with available “spare space” and in the general vicinity of the waterfront?
Oh yes! – that rumoured white elephant – Tākina – of course. The Conference Centre a previous Council had to have and now sits – often empty, apparently leaking money and not all that far away from the waterfront either.
Problem solved?
And what of the Bond Store – a building whose very timbers speak richly of our maritime past? Well, in the somewhat self-satisfied rationale of our deputy mayor, just fine and dandy for housing! Let some poor sap (oops, sorry – inspired developer) purchase it, wear the costs of its re-strengthening, and turn it into another pocket of rich people’s housing marked by its privileged – now private – access to our public waterfront.
Has anybody noticed that “civic pragmatism” has quietly segued into a “masked falsehood” , not to mention the inherent dumbness of tying up one, currently under-performing, civic asset while destroying another?
You see – decisions as to where to locate a conference are, these days, offered rich locational choice, being more often determined by the attraction of the location than the subject matter of a conference itself. And Wellington – currently in something of a blue funk of self-belief? Well, the one thing I’ve learnt over long observation of cities – today’s “down” is, almost inevitably, tomorrow’s “up”. Our city will eventually reassert its essential reality as a beautiful, small walkable place long admired for the drama of its water-edged setting, its food, its arts and its inherent creativity.
We will again be a place that the conference-going part of the world will be intrigued to visit. And what will we offer when that inevitable resurgence of interest emerges – a smallish conference centre with a significant portion of this tailor-made venue permanently alienated from conference use by an immovable and inauthentically positioned city museum……….. that’s what I mean………….dumb, dumb, dumb…… if we swapped the short term difficulties of one temporary white elephant by loading it up with the dead weight of a far more permanent and absolutely inauthentic interloper.
So why is authenticity of location and our city story telling so fundamentally important?
It is a question that the many Wellingtonians who have visited the Bond Store and its maritime-soaked story-telling know the answer to already as they continue to enjoy the pleasure of being surrounded by the muscular timber structure of this waterfront warehouse-turned Harbour Board Head Office – where the stories of our maritime origin and life come magically alive. Entomb this experience in the utterly inauthentic surroundings of a conference centre – and a loss to authentic place and story will be palpable.
So, dear readers, will we allow ourselves to be undone by the lure of short-term pragmatism – hardly the actions of inspired city governance that we’ve recently invested so much anticipated hope in?
Or will we tell our Councillors and Mayor in the loudest way possible – that difficult though this reversal of thinking may be, this is the wrong decision for possibly the right reasons, and requires our civic governance to exhibit some of that creativity of thought our city is so famous for.
See also Authenticity, popularity and success by Felicity Wong (July 13)
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