June 10, 2025 11:00am by David Farrar

Auckland Council vs the CRL

Hayden Donnell at The Spinoff writes:

About half an hour into Auckland Council’s debate on upzoning the city centre last week, mayor Wayne Brown looked up with a puzzled look on his face. He didn’t get why planners were telling his councillors they should vote to limit building heights on Karangahape Road. The area, he noted, was right next to a new train station on the rail line his council and the government have just spent $5.5 billion upgrading. “The whole point of this, as I understand, is to get more jobs and residents near this expensive railway, the City Rail Link. It doesn’t go far enough,” he said. …

Not satisfied with just voting to stop some construction around the City Rail Link, they wanted more stringent limits in place. Albany councillor Wayne Walker led the charge, moving an amendment to add heritage protections to an empty gravel pit down the end of Karangahape Road. He won the backing of Waitematā councillor Mike Lee, who speechified incomprehensibly about short-term parking and “standing up to vested interests”.

At this point, something seemed to break inside Brown. He proposed an exchange: if Walker and Lee were successful in putting heritage protections on an empty site 600 metres from a new rail station, he would move to enable unlimited density near their homes in Whangaparāoa and on Waiheke Island. Councillors laughed nervously. Deputy mayor Desley Simpson started patting his shoulder and urgently making a cutting motion near her neck. But Brown wasn’t done. “To vote to have an empty site turned into a historic building is to demean the value of historic buildings, so you are actively working against preservation,” he said. “This is stupidity.”

Heh, you can imagine the reaction when Brown threatened a vote on unlimited density on Waiheke!