America's Cup bases on course as Team NZ boat launch looms
Thursday, 5 September 2019
Major work to get downtown Auckland ready for the 2021 America's Cup is on track, as Team New Zealand prepares to launch the first of the radical new-generation boats.
The team's foiling AC75 monohull will be launched at dawn on Friday from its new base at the Wynyard Quarter, as work continues nearby building bases for the four teams which will challenge for the cup.
'All of the infrastructure that was planned, agreed and needed is on time and on budget,' said Tina Symmans, who chairs the team's event organisation America's Cup Event Limited.
Auckland Council said nearby downtown projects were also on target, including one that it had previously thought might not be ready in time.
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At Wynyard Point, where commercial fuel and chemical tanks have been removed, two of the four challenger base sites are ready for the teams to begin building bases and facilities.
'They will start construction work in the next month or six weeks,' said Barry Potter, the council's director of Infrastructure and Environmental Services.
Short bridges linking the bases to Wynyard Wharf will be completed by January allowing teams to lift boats in and out of the water.
Symmans said the Challenger of Record, Italy's Luna Rossa, was completing the design of its base, which will occupy a prime site on Hobson Wharf, as well as progressing the big TV and media centre to go up on Halsey Street Wharf.
The pouring of concrete has just been completed on the 80 metre by 80 metre extension to Hobson Wharf.
The event organiser was still considering how to use sites originally planned as bases, if a further four teams had challenged.
Auckland Council is contributing $113 million to infrastructure for the event, and a further $100m worth of upgrades around the downtown waterfront area are in the pipeline, some of it work that needed to be done regardless.
The council had been uncertain whether a new waterfront public space between Queens Wharf and Princes Wharf would be ready in time for the regatta, but Potter said that was looking more promising, after re-jigging the sequence of some work.
'We went through the programme yesterday, and there's a high level of confidence that will be ready,' he told Stuff.
Other council projects on track to be finished by the end of 2020 include the new streetscape on Albert Street, and the rebuilt square on lower Queen Street between the Britomart rail station and the Commercial Bay development.
The council agency Panuku Development has a string of projects between the Harbour Bridge and Hobson Wharf, all timed to be ready by December 2020.
These include a marine retail sector in Westhaven, a $16m eastern extension to the existing promenade, and the expansion of Silo Park once the last cluster of tanks is removed from the southern end of Wynyard Point.
A new public open space will be completed next to the almost-finished hotel on Halsey Street, and boat servicing firm Orams is building a new refit and repair facility including an 800 tonne travel-lift to help service luxury boats visiting for the regatta.
'There's nothing like having a really big international event - that's the good thing about the America's Cup, it really catalyses development,' said Katelyn Orton, Panuku's project development director.
The next big move will be at the end of October when the Sealink vehicle ferry relocates from Wynyard Wharf, and starts operating from a new facility on the western side of Hamer Street.