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What Happened to the Wellington Street Race? |
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| By
Jody Seabright Why did Wellington’s bid to hold a round of the V8 Supercar Championship throw a rod through the side of it’s block at the last minute? Was it the fault of the Council, Objectors, the Resource Management Act (RMA), or was it just a pie in the sky idea doomed to failure? Right from the very outset, when AVESCO first invited for bids on a NZ Street Race, Wellington City Council hadn’t exactly been enthusiastic about chasing a bid. Indeed they never submitted a final bid as Auckland, or should I say John Banks went after it like a man possessed. The two main factors in this were Wellington’s previous experience with the Nissan Mobil street races and the deal that was being offered by promoters. From this experience the Council knew that being required to take on many of the commercial risks (including ticket sales, and sponsorship, as well as track construction) wasn’t a good deal. When Auckland’s bid finally fell over the focus then moved back to Wellington, however this time there were two promoters courting the capital (rather than many councils courting one promoter) and surprise, surprise the deal had sweetened some what. Now the deal was now closer to, provide the venue and contribute to AVESCO’s fees. No significant commercial risk. This was something the Wellington Council could work with. So with the council working on a tight timeframe to come up with a serious bid there were the (to be expected) objectors starting to make themselves known. Although there are vocal groups who are philosophically opposed to motorsport (hard line Greenies and parts of the arts community), they didn’t really get much traction with their arguments. The real problems started with issues outside of the proposed street race. In order for the council to get support for the new inner city bypass road they argued that it would take pressure off Jervois Quay and the waterfront roads. This would then allow them to be turned into more of a boulevard, creating a better link from the city to the sea for pedestrians. So when it was realised that the proposed street race circuit might compromise this agreement, people like Marian Hobbs became the public voice of opposition to the race. Further discussion with race track inspectors showed that trees, median strips and cobblestones don’t mix well with race circuits, so the decision was made to move the track location to the second preferred option, around the stadium. This brings in the next issue. Resource Consent. Of recent times the very mention of the Resource Management Act or Resource Consent has people cringing. However the principles of the Act are sound, being designed to stop people from damaging our environment without concern for the consequences. Although it doesn’t deal well with temporary events, the real issues arise out of what the Councils write in their District Plans. It’s the rules in the District Plan that determines if a Resource Consent is required or not. The actual wording can cause huge problems especially when councils are now writing more and more prescriptive clauses, rather than performance based clauses. Just consider the Western Springs noise problem. If the council there had written in 95dBA (or even 90) to their District Plan there wouldn’t be any problems there at all. The problem is that the council wrote 85dBA and the neighbours ensured it was enforced. The moving of the proposed track down to the Thorndon area also demonstrates this. Although a Street Race is a Permitted Activity in the Central Area Zone, the top 400m of the road for the Stadium Circuit is outside the Zone, and needs a Resource Consent. Not a big problem in itself, but this is just the tip of the iceberg. Changes to the District Plan over the years has meant that because the proposed track borders onto Residential Zones there are technically 6 different Town Planning Zones that the track will pass through. That’s why it was likely to take years to get any Resource Consent approved. The layers of rules the council has written means that any Resource Consent application is complex and opens the door wider for appeals to higher courts by whoever loses. In fact it will probably be quicker and easier to get changes written into the District Plan than to get a Resource Consent. So what are the main issues that would drive appeals to a Resource Consent? According to Marian Hobbs the majority of calls she received were from residents in the Thorndon area where people are genuinely concerned about noise and the disruption. By the time Wellington City Council announced that it was pulling out of the bid to host the race in 2006 & 2007 these concerns hadn’t been tested to see if they were valid or not. Therein lies the problem, how do you test to see if noise and disruption was going to be at levels that would be acceptable or not. Do we get a grid of NZ V8 Touring Cars to do some laps on closed roads in the area to see what happens? The key to allaying fears and opposition is to resolve these issues before hand. Certainly it has remained in the too hard basket so far. There was opposition on various other issues, including lost revenue by affected businesses, and disagreement on the economic benefit to the city. However these (and others) didn’t appear to be lasting issues that couldn’t be sorted, and they certainly wouldn’t have stopped the granting of a Resource Consent. In the end the combination of all of these issues, along with the requirement to confirm a serious proposal to AVESCO by a certain date meant that the Wellington Council had no option but to pull out. It couldn’t guarantee that a race would happen, and it was the tight timeframe that meant the council sought public consultation while the detailed design proposal was still being worked through. This created the appearance that the council was incompetent when things changed. After the initial ranting we all heard from Tony Cochrane he once again appears to have been overruled by the AVESCO Board of Directors and the V8 Supercars will be back at Pukekohe for the next few years. NZ is important to them, but what is the long term plan? Could Wellington still get it together given more time? May be so, however as I’ve said before I would still prefer to see the sorts of dollars involved in putting a temporary circuit together invested into providing world class permanent facilities for us to play on every weekend. That said, there are people prepared to take the time needed and resolve the issues in order to make it happen in Wellington. Both Wellington Mayor Kerry Prendergast and Wellington Central MP Marian Hobbs agree that motorsport has a place in NZ society. Both also agree that the perceptions surrounding our sport need to be managed if our venues and events are to continue. Noise is the big one, and as we already know, what might register on a meter isn’t necessarily what is perceived. |
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