Pie in the blue sky

July 31, 2010
Nelson might have a reputation for being a place where it's tough to get big, ambitious ideas off the ground, but that doesn't mean we can't dream. Geoff Collett looks at some of the grander - and occasionally stranger - visions for transforming the city and the region.
It was a sight for sore eyes and to gladden dulled hearts, there on the front page of The Nelson Mail on Friday last week. The headline, "Bridge linking Mapua and Rabbit Island mooted", said it all; the photograph, with the alignment of the mooted bridge shown with a thick yellow line, left no doubt - the spirit of grand designs, big hopes and limitless dreams is still alive and well in Nelson.
For years - probably decades - Nelson has been regarded both within and without as a place that doesn't much fancy change, where many of the locals prefer things just the way they are.
But pushing against that has been a smaller but high-profile group who imagine how things could be - if only.
It doesn't take much trawling of The Nelson Mail's archives to drag up memories of those who have promoted such dreams of the region - a place where no wilderness is too untamed to push a road through, no coastline too challenging to build a port or marina on, no hill too daunting to drive a tunnel through or place something on top of.
The same archive-trawl revealed that it is not only the progress league who have occasional improbable visions of a future Nelson. There was a report of a town planner's crystal- ball gazing back in 1970, envisaging a Nelson of some undetermined date in the future - a place of "sprawling ribbon development on reclamation at Wakapuaka, an industrial desert adjoining the port, a casino on Haulashore Island and a Butlins-type holiday camp at Tahunanui, unrelieved suburbia over the Waimea Plains and a line of luxury hotels and skyscrapers on the Rabbit Island foreshore".
That Malthusian nightmare was unrealised too. But it's not too late - there's surely something in that list for future dreamers to promote as the region's next big idea . . . and if they pay close attention to the following, they might get a sense of where those before them have come unstuck.
The landfill spa
Picture it: Nelson as the therapeutic spa capital of the South Island, giving Hanmer a run for its money, with tourists and locals alike flocking to soak away their cares in a complex of pools and baths heated by the soothing thermal properties of . . . landfill gas.
Back in 1997, Nelson City Council was casting about for a way of safely disposing of the large volumes of methane created by the tonnes of rotting rubbish slowly filling the city landfill in York Valley above Bishopdale. Methane was recognised as a "greenhouse" gas, and was causing a bad smell that occasionally drifted across the nearby suburb.
Then the idea came from within its engineering department to encourage a developer to build a spa resort - perhaps on the Cattlemarket Reserve, only a couple of kilometres from the dump, where bathers would have the added ambience of nearby Waimea Rd - and pipe the gas to it, to heat the water for the pools.
Never mind that the methane- heated water would lack the natural mineral salts that add the therapeutic element normally associated with spa resorts.
The Cawthron Institute had the answer to that, through a project it had been working on to develop a system of adding minerals to water to mimic the natural chemical makeup of geothermal spas.
Heartened by an enthusiastic response from some councillors, council staff put together a case for funding for a full feasibility report.
There was also scepticism, however, and the idea was quietly replaced with a less imaginative option the following year - spending close to $1 million on a system that could safely burn off the gas.
Ultimately, a productive use for the gas was found, as technology developed - the landfill gas is now piped from York Valley to fire the boiler at Nelson Hospital.
The pollution vacuum
Nelson City Council - smarting from the defeat of the southern link highway proposal, partly because of concerns about air pollution - was in the early stages of developing its air quality plan to solve the winter smog problem when councillor Ian Barker put forward a novel suggestion.
In March 2002, The Nelson Mail reported Mr Barker telling the council of an approach he had had from a Nelson resident who did not want to be named. The resident had the idea of creating a giant vacuum system to suck the city's pollution out of the air and into the stormwater drains, from where it would eventually, he predicted, drift out to sea.
"There are few ideas that make an awful lot of sense, " Mr Barker said at the time. "I thought this was very, very good thinking."
Others weren't so sure. While few details of how the system would actually work were discussed, the Mail consulted one local engineer who could see various flaws, including the difficulty of using a non-airtight drainage system to create vacuum suction, and the large number of expensive, noisy fans that would be needed.
While Mr Barker called for the council's air-quality working party to be convened to discuss the possibility, and suggested it should also be referred to the then highways authority, Transit NZ, it appeared to drift away and vanish without trace.
The Ruby Bay reclamation
Ruby Bay as the Pauanui or Sylvania Waters of the south? A mysterious would-be developer - who refused to be identified - floated the idea of a large-scale redevelopment of the Ruby Bay coastline back in 1999, to create an exclusive housing development built around a complex of artificial waterways with three marinas.
Everybody agreed it was ambitious but then Tasman mayor John Hurley threw himself wholeheartedly behind what he called "one of the most forward-thinking and positive ventures that the district was likely to see for some time".
There were no costings made public, and precious little detail released on the proposal, which was fronted by a local real estate agent and a shelf company. Perhaps in an attempt to sweeten the pill for those alarmed by the large-scale land reclamation and coastal works that would be needed, the development was promoted as a way of countering the severe erosion along the stretch of coast. Erosion experts pooh-poohed that idea, suggesting that, if anything, the development would itself be in severe danger from the area's strong tidal draw and occasional heavy seas.
There was apparently an element of kite-flying, with the project spokesman saying that the two main hurdles were "community acceptance and the resource consent process". Despite the mayor's (and some others') enthusiasm, it never got within cooee of either.
The Globe on Maitai
Public consultation exercises by local councils are always good for bringing a few bright ideas out of the woodwork. Earlier this year, as Nelson's civic leaders agonised and wrestled with the argument over whether Nelson should build a performing arts centre, a local man, Daniel Hall, put forward his suggestion to give the vexed subject an added edge to help it win widespread acclaim.
Mr Hall turned to the home of the greatest playwright for the inspiration behind his idea of building a replica Globe Theatre on the banks of the lower Maitai River, modelled on that built by William Shakespeare's theatrical company back in the late 16th century.
As a venue for Shakespeare festivals it could attract visitors from around the country, and Mr Hall said although he had not done costings, he had talked to interested benefactors and no-one had said they did not like the idea.
Several councillors, however, were not at all enthused and the Shakespeare Globe Centre New Zealand - a group set up to promote the performance, appreciation and study of Shakespeare's works - was unimpressed.
"It would be a bit like trying to rebuild Buckingham Palace or the Tower of London in Nelson, " said its spokeswoman.
A Nelson "icon"
Another theme that occasionally crops up is the concern that Nelson doesn't have a large, stylised symbol to represent some local attribute - along the lines of Queensland's Big Pineapple, or Ohakune's fabled carrot.
Various ideas emerge, but none has been more dramatic than Paul Bieleski's 2000 suggestion of a giant model of a helium atom to be erected on the top of the Grampians, where it would be visible from road, sea and air as a tribute to the region's most famous son, Ernest, Lord Rutherford.
Mr Bieleski's idea attracted no enthusiasm; nor, apparently, did architect Grahame Anderson's proposal a couple of years later for Richmond to build a 35-metre tower, including a viewing platform, to loom across the town and plains. He imagined a flower-like shape, "of sufficient size and uniqueness that it would be one recognised as an image representative of Richmond and nowhere else".
A new port
Nelson's Boulder Bank - indeed, the whole of Nelson - would be a very different place if the grand vision of a group of businessmen of the mid-1990s came to pass. Their project - fronted by a prominent local politician of the day, Owen Jennings - became known as Port Kakariki, a deepwater port featuring a one-kilometre-long wharf extending from the Boulder Bank into Tasman Bay, where giant ships could berth and manoeuvre with ease.
Its backers talked enthusiastically of it becoming the hub to ship West Coast coal to fire the emerging Asian industrial machine, as well as handling logs, which would be barged across Tasman Bay from Mapua.
Their plans looked to be serious, too, as they unveiled broad details of a $97 million project in mid-1994; the consultancy company behind the project seemed heavyweight, fronted by former Cabinet minister and future ACT party leader Richard Prebble and including various state and private sector high flyers.
Yet as local opposition to the project multiplied, mostly prompted by alarm at the effects on the Boulder Bank; as the full extent of the physical works emerged, including the construction of enormous sheds on the bank to house cargo; as repeated questions about details went unanswered; and as scepticism about the business model underpinning the port spread, with rival transport operators casting doubt on its viability, so Port Kakariki slowly but surely unravelled.
By 1996, The Nelson Mail, for one, was prepared to all but deliver the last rites to the project, as "too grandiose to ever be put into practice". But it was never truly dead and several years later, when the Nelson North marine reserve was proposed, Port Nelson lodged its concerns that a reserve must not be allowed to hinder the possibility that one day, a deep-water port may be built out in Tasman Bay.


A cross-city tunnel
It could be suggested that you only need to show some people a hill and they'll want to put a tunnel through it - and Nelson's geography, plus its long- running debates over how best to move traffic, makes the city a juicy target for tunnel enthusiasts everywhere. Letters to the editor in The Nelson Mail are a particularly fertile breeding ground for tunnelling ideas, which occasionally come with suggestions such as using the unemployed to build them by hand.
The tunnel lobby has promoted three basic proposals: one boring the full length of the port hills, from Tahunanui Dr to Haven Rd; or from Annesbrook (or Tahunanui) to Emano St in Victory Square; or from Tahunanui to Washington Valley.
The main drawback is the obvious one, as the recently released study into the city's future arterial roads pointed out - any of them would cost at least $200m, and the longest (the Annesbrook- Haven Rd option) would probably be "multiples" of that amount, presumably meaning the thick end of $1 billion.
The flipside is that they would all make the trip across town faster, and the level of enthusiasm from pro-tunnel sorts clearly convinced the arterial study group that it had to at least look like it was considering them seriously.
Predictably, though, the study group ended up dismissing any tunnels as a realistic option (as it did fly-overs, incidentally); but it is still hard to escape the feeling that so long as Nelson has hills, there will be someone somewhere arguing we also need a tunnel.
A Karamea-Collingwood road
A project far bigger and farther-reaching than most of the region's pipe-dreams, this was part of a push to "complete" a roading loop of the South Island by joining up the southwestern corner between Haast and Hollyford, and the northwestern corner between Karamea and Collingwood.
Its big push came about a decade ago, led by Nelson businessman Fred Willetts, who was convinced that building the two new roads through the wilderness would transform the island.
That he was serious was reflected in the amount of money he poured into promoting his vision, including paying for 200,000 copies of a special publication to be circulated via daily newspapers across the South Island, and in the political backing he gained, including from several South Island mayors, Tasman's then mayor John Hurley among them.
Not surprisingly, however, the opposition was even more potent, starting with then prime minister Helen Clark and including a vocal environmental lobby.
Reality was also against the project. Mr Hurley and the Tasman District Council commissioned reports on the Karamea-Collingwood plan's viability, with the conclusion that there really wasn't much - it would cost a fortune and fall well short of the threshold for government funding, it was at odds with the shift in government thinking away from building new roads, and it would face high legal and political hurdles and a mighty environmental backlash.
Still, it had enough momentum for it to feature as a local issue in the West Coast-Tasman electorate at the 2002 election and for Mr Hurley to maintain that it was a long-term goal and "unfinished business that needs to be done".
While the idea has occasionally been aired in the years since, it has long faded from public view and with Mr Hurley's departure from the Tasman mayoralty and Mr Willetts' death in 2008, it would need another, even more determined, champion to be entertained again.