Railway Campus |
One technique for saving a building from demolition is to buy it. The students raised three million dollars and came very close to owning the Auckland Central Railway Station.
A developer however put in a higher bid. The challenge then was to sell the idea of turning the building into student accommodation to those who now held the power and the building. It had all begun when we decided that instead of telling everyone else to be sustainable it might be more interesting for the University to itself become more sustainable. At the time our Head of Department was investigating how more parking could be provided to make it possible for planning students to accelerate global warming, clog the motorways, and use up the world's oil reserves. Providing accommodation on campus so that students could walk to their sustainability lectures seemed like a simple, obvious first move to present an alternative scenario. At the time the Railway Station was up for sale and the threat of demolition hung heavy in the air. If we could save the building while also providing accommodation we would be making real urban design progress. The stakes were high. We consulted one of Auckland's leading developers and he said we could never pull it off. Students however love facing impossible challenges. It lifts their sights above mediocrity. We went out in search of financial backing. We came very close to owning the station. Fortunately, in retrospect, we did not make it. Theory was thrown out the window as we used every available planning technique to realise our objective. We found that the Vice-Chancellor was flying to Melbourne. We discovered who would be sitting next to him. We converted them to our idea and they had four hours with a captive audience. We invited the Development Manager for the University to view our proposals. The presentation had to be impeccable, and I told the students exactly what I wanted. He was met by a student who had the opportunity to talk as they walked over to the meeting. He was greeted with the aroma of freshly brewed coffee and a background of classical music. The students who served the fresh pastries used all their skills of waitressing in the best restaurants in town. He suddenly realised that this was not a student project. We were serious. The Head of Department realised we were serious when a bill arrived to cover the cost of catering. The brilliance of the students was rewarded with grumbling. We finally convinced the University that providing student accommodation on campus was "core business". Along the way we had to reverse a Senate decision that it was not, and also to reverse a decision to sell off all the existing student accommodation. The new corporate model university did not have sustainability on the agenda. We not only provided 600 beds at the University Campus, we also saved another 600 beds from sale, so that in one academic year the novice planning students provided 1,200 beds on campus, and saved 1,200 car park spaces. Planning techniques such as spreading the rumour that Massey, at the Albany Campus, was going to use accommodation to entice the best students away from Auckland were not to be found in any of the library books. We had a client, and we had made our idea their own. We still had to convince the developer. Eventually however the package was complete. The project went ahead. The architect's design was abysmal, but Bill Gummer's magnificent foyer was beautifully restored. We had bought another forty years. We had achieved more in eight months than any other planners in Auckland, with no resources, but the University disowned us. The Head of Architecture said that because we were not the architects what we had done had no value. The Head of Planning refused to accept that the student’s incredible performance had any merit in the new Performance Based evaluation system. When you achieve the impossible everyone feels threatened. A great pity. A tedious academic paper on the station was recorded in the Annual Report, but the achievement itself never received a mention. However when academics fly in from other countries we take them down for a cappuccino in the foyer, and they are filled with wonder. |
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