Hard News: On the Waterfront
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A decent portion (some is needed for access) of the outside of them can be used for something entirely different. The Wellington Stadium has University of Otago offices in it, and I think conference facilities. The new Dunedin one is set to have a health centre and a gym in it (and possibly a cafe, I can't remember).
The caketin is not a great example of this. The only time I've been to Otago's facility there it was desolate and eerie. One of the functions that had been there had moved out. The space was not particularly pleasant, lunch had to be provided because there was no way that you could get to anywhere to get food, eat, and get back in a sensible timeframe. I think the following year new space at the medical school was used, and by contrast, you could wander out to newtown, grab coffee, food etc., and altogether better experience. I think this is partly because the caketin is kinda nowhere.
The new Dunedin stadium may be better, but they're talking about about a serious amount of additional space and facilities, rather than the the stuff underneath the caketin that seems pretty token. If the plaza feel gets pulled off, then it could work much better in Dunedin, and there are cafes and stuff, all the better. Also, if the path round the harbour links back into the stadium area it might work.
http://www.carisbrook.org.nz/pages/images.html -
And the wharves *are* usable public property.
How so? They're locked and won't let me walk through them. That's *usable public*?
You can't walk through Eden Park when there isn't a game on, for instance.
Eden Park is owned by the Eden Park Trust - it's not public property. IIRC the trust deed basically says it's purpose is to serve Auckland cricket and rugby associations.
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Robyn for Mayor of New Zealand, I say.
Apropos the SH1 re-routing: the map is too sketchy and the text too vague. But ko Taupiri te maunga , there's no way in hell Tainui would take that lying down.
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Offices, gyms and even cafes are not public space. (Any more than the Canary Wharf tower in London is a public space just because it includes a train station and shopping mall).
Train stations and the like are an interesting case: I tend to think of the Wellington Railway Station concourse & booking hall as interior public spaces, and the great stations around the world are spaces of great civic significance. In the strict sense of "a space that belongs to a public authority rather than a private entity, and to which public access is guaranteed almost all the time", then of course malls are not public spaces. But Benjamin wrote a lot about arcades, which were a precursor to malls in a sense, in a way that treated them very much as part of the public realm.
In reality, there is a spectrum of land uses that ranges from the truly public to the purely private. Cafes and bars form a vitally important part of the "third space", and as the phrase "public house" indicates, in many cultures they are considered to be as important a public facility as a park or square. In fact, the ground floor of a building that houses a popular and accessible cafe can be much more relevant and useful as a sociable public space than a poorly designed and sited park.
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Yes, I think we need to distinguish places owned by the public from places used by the public.
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It's 1.5km from the nearest "leezure" area at Customhouse Quay and nearly 3km from Courtney Place.
The Backbencher's a five minute walk I'd say -- don't know how you're getting Customhouse Quay as the closest leisure facility. Certainly the Fever never had any problem getting from a pub to the stadium on foot.
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The Backbencher's a five minute walk
You gotta imagine there's a bar called The Dockers Punch or something considerably closer. Or would have been in the good old days when industrial workers went for two pints before work, three at lunchtime and nine after...
Yes, I think we need to distinguish places owned by the public from places used by the public.
My point is that a facility for Big Sport is likely to be neither. Like the Cake Tin or Eden Park, open only to paying customers.
As noted above, you can't walk through Queens Wharf or Eden Park. The former however, contributes money to the citizens. The latter (despite its private ownership) is subsidised by them.
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By the way, italic stuff is not quite right? I had a space between the closing underbars and the word stuff.
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The Backbencher's a five minute walk I'd say -- don't know how you're getting Customhouse Quay as the closest leisure facility. Certainly the Fever never had any problem getting from a pub to the stadium on foot.
The Molesworth area (Backbencher, Thistle and ... that's about it) doesn't really add up to a "Leezure area". Kumutoto/Queens Wharf (off Customhouse Quay) is one of the nearest bar/restaurant areas with any critical mass, though there is a smattering of bars along Featherston St. But if you're on your way from the Stadium to Courtenay Place (which is where most of the munters ... oops, I mean "dedicated sports fans") will be headed, then Kumutoto would be the first cluster of bars you hit. Not exactly adjacent, especially when you count the long trudge along the concourse, but better than Auckland's situation.
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From your original post
... where the line takes a roundabout bath to Eden Park.
now that's got imagination! I think every roundabout should have a bath. It would make Auckland a tourist mecca.
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The Molesworth area (Backbencher, Thistle and ... that's about it) doesn't really add up to a "Leezure area". ...
Not exactly adjacent, especially when you count the long trudge along the concourse, but better than Auckland's situation.
I took Russell's comment "proximity of the stadium to Wellington's leisure precinct" to mean basically it was pretty close to the central town area in general - Featherston St, Lambton Quay, Manners and Cuba St, Courtenay Place etc. It's just a walk - it's close.
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now that's got imagination! I think every roundabout should have a bath. It would make Auckland a tourist mecca.
Damn! I didn't even know what a creative genius I was until you pointed it out to me.
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By the way, italic stuff is not quite right? I had a space between the closing underbars and the word stuff.
I think it has always functioned like that. I usually put an extra space in to avoid that problem. One space. Two spaces.
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Without wanting to sound like John Morrison, really I don’t, the Caketin / Railyards Stadium in Wellington is a good advertisement for the “Build it and they will come” theory.
What’s its most profitable arm? No, it’s not All Black tests, it’s the Sevens. And when the stadium was conceived in the mid 90s there was no such thing as a World Sevens Circuit, and there was no way New Zealanders were going to dress up to party (Central?) for 2 days in summer.
It also generates money from Home and Garden shows. Remember them in the 90s? Of course not.
As well as the regular income derived from having a Wellington side in a professional Australian football competition.
And now there’s T20 cricket.
None of these were anywhere the entertainment landscape of the 20th century, but once they arrived there was one stadium able to cash in on it.
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Somehow having thousands of drunken rugby fans on a wharf didn't seem sensible for a start - man or woman overboard all too likely to happen frequently. Then it occurred to me that it could work as way of ensuring that any unsuccessful All Blacks coach doesn't get a second (or third even) attempt at winning the wretched Cup. A few thousand angry fans, a sack with a couple of concrete blocks in it - and splash, problem solved...
As for bars on the route from the city to the stadium in Wellington - beer drinkers will leave the Backbencher much poorer but not much drunker as they serve the most expensive beer around. Try the Occidental on Lambton Quay instead. Tends to be a bit busy around game time tho.
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(which is where most of the munters ... oops, I mean "dedicated sports fans")
Yeah, um, this isn't really dispelling the whole snobbery thing, is it?
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in the good old days when industrial workers went for two pints before work, three at lunchtime and nine after...
Aye, when I were a lad...
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As soon as I posted that I got an earworm.
"All the teachers down the pub handing round the ready rubbed..."
Does anyone else remember drunken teachers reeking of tobacco?. Or am I just that old?. -
By the way, how do you get other people's quotes to be in grey text with that groovy little pinstripe alongside?
Like that?
After loging in (within the comments box) - before the passage you want to appear as quotes
1) type this symbol: <
2) then type the actual word: quote
3) close with the corresponding symbol >
so the bit before the quoted passage looks like this:Then:
4) using the edit function, clip and paste the post you want to appear as a quote, and at the end of the passage
5) type the symbol <
6) then the keystroke /
7) the word: quote
8) then close with >so the bit after the quoted passage looks like
.
Hope this helps. It was the posting links thing that got me (thanks Deborah!).
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beer drinkers will leave the Backbencher much poorer but not much drunker as they serve the most expensive beer around. Try the Occidental on Lambton Quay instead.
Really? Try Leuven or the Malthouse for some properly expensive beer. I'm not sure that the Poxy Oxy has much worth drinking: mostly mediocre Monteiths stuff. As someone once said about wine: "Good beer is never too expensive. Bad beer always is".
Yeah, um, this isn't really dispelling the whole snobbery thing, is it?
No. No it isn't. Where on earth did you get the impression that I intended to dispel any impression of snobbery?
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The Backbencher is I believe, frequented by unsavoury characters who work in the local industrial works.
Also, on the subject of snobbery, how working class is an event with $1400 tickets?
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I think you'll find most of us in Dunedin who oppose the local stadium are not really against actually having a stadium (after all we already have one, did you see the game on Saturday? it was sold out, the new one will be a little smaller) - what we are against is PAYING so much for a second one - and having only 50,000 ratepayers pony up $200-400M for it - depending on overruns, 10% already in 2 months, and financing costs and whatever it's going to cost to reroute SH88
That was one issue, but for me, over and above the ratepayer issue is that in many ways, it's an opportunity lost.
The Stadium could have been, with a little more imagination and foresight, a proper "multi-purpose venue", if they incorporated other elements- wouldn't it be great to have something (as was the original intention) that could double as a facility for the Pys-Ed Students and be adjacent to an indoor stadium?
Wouldn't it be great, somehow, to have a stadium that's of a size and shape that means it's not merely limited to rugby?
I say this as a diehard Otago Supporter who spent far too many school weekends on the terraces with his dad, and then quite a few once University began, and say a stupid number of cricket internationals there.
But Carisbrook is, once you take away the romance away from it- an ugly, ugly ground that relies so much on its "atmosphere", because if you look at it objectively, it's a rickety windtunnel.
So, in that sense, the basic concept- a covered stadium- is at least a step in the right direction. But the initial promise- and I distinctly remember interviewing Malcom Farry about it back in the day- was much grander and more appealing. I guess it came down to the dual issues of cost and location, and the small matter of lack of private funding. But if all we're getting is a new, nicer looking Carisbrook in an admittedly nicer location, then it seems an awful lot of money to pay.
I want the new stadium to be a success, I really do. But I can't help but wonder what might have been.
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None of these were anywhere the entertainment landscape of the 20th century, but once they arrived there was one stadium able to cash in on it.
I felt the same way about the would-be Stadium New Zealand in Auckland -- although I'd have been inclined to add value with decent conference facilities. Far more so than the Wellington stadium, it would have worked for a wide range of social activities. Imagine a wedding in a room on the Eastern side, looking out to the Gulf, for example.
And I do suspect that, even given the qualms about its cost now, Dunedinites will find plenty of uses for a stadium with a roof.
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Oops, that was rather long, wasn't it? Bloody parochial former Dunedinites, always think they're the centre of everything ;)
On another note:We're focused on the Auckland debate in the media in this week's Media7. The panel includes Simon Wilson, author of the pro-Supercity cover story in the current Metro ("Why Rodney Hide has got it right. Really") and Chris Trotter, who delivered a broadside against that story in The Independent.
Also, Hamish Keith, who has established a typically forthright blog as a home for his ideas -- he favours a unitary authority, but with a different configuration to the plan offered by the government -- and Rod Oram.
In the second part of the show, we'll be marking the 25th anniversary of the 1984 snap election, which permanently changed the direction of the country. The panel for that is Marilyn Waring (yes!), Richard Long and Richard Harman.
But here's the thing: because of a longstanding booking at The Classic, tomorrow's recording will be very early: 2pm. So we'd need you there by 1.30pm and have you out before 3pm. The bar will be open, should your nerves need steadying.
Don't mean to suck up, but damn, that sounds like a great show. Y'know, one of these days I might actually be up in Auckland to be in the audience.
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And I do suspect that, even given the qualms about its cost now, Dunedinites will find plenty of uses for a stadium with a roof.
Yeah, I can't deny that side appeals. I'm not against the stadium somuch as slightly disappointed in the council firstly, showing a lack of foresight in what it could have been, and secondly, the arrogance of how it was pushed through.
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