I say ''perhaps'' because continued statements that the mayor and council should simply have made the project happen show all too many still don't recognise the limits of their powers.
Statute law, notably the Resource Management Act, can't simply be ignored. And while bylaws, here most relevantly the Dunedin District Plan, are made by council, changes to them entail a democratic process whose outcome it can't simply dictate.
The mayor's article explaining his own and the council's involvement with the high-rise project shows he knows these constraints and exhibited a willingness to go to the limit of the council's powers by offering to contemplate initiating a plan change.
I've said before I'm not sure that would succeed for the site at 41 Wharf St and a building of anything like the proposed one's purpose and height, even if the traffic issues could be resolved.
But it is clear now another site was considered, at the junction of Birch and Kitchener Sts, where there is a slipway and the Otago Regional Council has considered building new offices.
Ms Jing Song, one of the project's principals, has said an offer was made for the site, or perhaps just an inquiry whether the ORC would be open to one and the council has said it might be.
As I said, I think the hotel/apartment high-rise project is dead, but it's interesting to ask if it could have worked there and, if it couldn't, what might.
The site seemed promising to some because it is more extensive than 41 Wharf St and because, unlike that, it isn't in an industrial zone where apartments and hotels cannot be built as of right.
It is in the harbourside area, whose planning possibilities and limitations are accessible on the council's website through the link at the end of this column.
I've been told the ORC's proposed office site is nearly twice the size of 41 Wharf St and also that there's some other adjacent land that might have been available, so the possible site would be three times the size.
In the harbourside zone you can build hotels and apartments as of right, so you can see why the ORC site might seem promising.
But there's a catch. The maximum height permitted in harbourside is only four floors or 15m. Three times four equals only 12, still well short of 27 levels above ground, so it would accommodate less than half Betterways' desired floor space.
Perhaps that's why a plan change was contemplated. Whether it would have succeeded is another matter.
A 13 or 14-storey building on the ORC site would still be very prominent and contrasting in views to and from the still substantially historic central city.
If my and Capri Enterprises' lawyer's view of the decision declining Betterways' application is right, an application to build to this height on the ORC site, or a plan change to facilitate that, might fail for the same reason: adversely affecting the existing city's character by tipping it towards the modern.
One correspondent has misunderstood me on this. I don't think it's impossible to set a building against a backdrop of others of another character and get a good aesthetic result.
The Sydney Opera House does this. I'm saying the plan seems to rule out such a development because it ranks preserving character higher than improving aesthetics.
The harbourside planning document has an appendix 26:2 Design Code, which lays out detailed requirements, many of which are to make new buildings essentially conform to the materials, forms and bulk of the existing building stock in the immediate vicinity.
Later this year the ORC will decide whether it wants to build an office on its site and if it doesn't, it might be open to others to build there. So it's not entirely pointless to ask what might be suitable for this very prominent site at the southeast tip of the Steamer Basin.
Certainly it shouldn't be too tall, if only so it doesn't need special permission or a plan change. Ms Song approached an architect, Fred Van Brandenburg, who has an office in Dunedin.
Mr Van Brandenburg has designed headquarters for Marisfrolg Fashion, an apparel chain, in Shenzhen in China. It's amazing, very original, very elegant and very large. There are images of it on Architecture Van Brandenburg's Facebook page, whose link is also below.
A much smaller building of comparable originality and elegance would indeed be an ornament on the waterfront.
It wouldn't meet locale design requirements, but I'd support an exception for something as good as that.
Links
http://www.dunedin.govt.nz/--data/assets/pdf-file/0005/266261/Section-26...
https://www.facebook.com/ArchitectureVanBrandenburg
Peter Entwisle is a Dunedin curator, historian and writer.
