52: Devonport Dining District
What if there was an easy way to breathe new life into Devonport?
Most Aucklanders and visitors to this city would agree Devonport is one of those special places with many natural advantages when it comes to its setting sandwiched between the harbour and two volcanic cones with spectacular city and sea views in almost all directions.
As a place to live, it is certainly one of the special and most desirable parts of Auckland. But as a town centre, it is looking pretty tired and seems to have stagnated over the past ten years or more while other locations have really surged ahead in terms of destination activities like food and drink offerings and boutique or specialist retail that you might expect from a town centre in such a beautiful setting.
Interestingly, the Auckland Plan and City Centre Masterplan identified Devonport as an integral part of the city fringe making it akin to the likes of Ponsonby and Parnell as one of the heritage urban fringe villages that overlooks and feeds off the city centre. This sort of thinking could really change the future prospects for Devonport as a destination town centre should there be interest in pursuing those opportunities.
Wouldn’t it be great if Devonport could develop as a dining district? Attracting night time visitors from the city side with top quality dining options with unbeatable harbour views and village character, combined with summer’s evening promenading around the harbour’s edge seems like a real winner. So why isn’t it like that already?
Stuart Houghton 2014
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Must agree with this. Nice place, but the food options in Devonport aren’t great.
Parking rules as usual. Masses of angle parking and ferry park and ride take up all the obvious public space. Hoping the terminal upgrade will allow places to spill out on new plaza, rather than being inside dreary terminal.
A ferry every ten minutes would require three boats in constant rotation, where there is only one now. So it means two new vessels and crews and a tripling of operating cost… that is unlikely to triple the patronage.
However, going to 15 minute frequencies would require a second boat (at ‘only’double the cost), which naturally isn’t so expensive and has a better chance of breaking even. A ferry every fifteen minutes is a realistic goal.
Not quite tripling the operating cost. Wouldn’t need any extra security at either wharf, or ticketing staff, or power to light them, or management costs, or depriciation on boats.
I was talking about service opex, assuming that wharf operations remain constant. So yes you need three times the boats, three times the depreciation on boats, three times the fuel, three times the onboard staff… Three times the cost.
Except that they already have enough boats to offer this service, and a more frequent service could utilise some of their smaller vesssels.
Really? They have two spare ferries sitting around unused?
They operate every 15 minutes during the day, so definitely have one of them spare, prusumably the lower frequency on the birkenhead and Bayswater services means that they actually have 3 free.
They operate every half hour across the day, with three extra runs in the morning and two in the evening peak to go to fifteen for a brief period. Also just after the peak they drop to a 45 min headway, presumably because the boats are rotating through other runs. They certainly don’t keep a whole boat for just those five runs though.
Anyway, I’m just pointing out that ferries are very expensive to buy and run (huge engines, three or four staff per boat) which makes high frequency operation a difficult proposition. It would take either a lot more patronage, or a new model with much smaller and cheaper to run boats, to run ten minute headways.
Requiring 10 min frequencies might be worth the cost to break the Fullers stranglehold on the route.
I’d be happy with one every half hour after 8 pm on a week day. The number of times I’ve arrived at the wharf just after 8pm and cursed this provincial, backwater, chickentown because I knew there was an hours wait on the cold wharf ahead of me.
The time goes quicker with a double scoop of gelato. But yes, half hour headways would be a very big improvement.
Or a cold pint. Depending on the time of day.
Where does the Stanley Bay ferry go after its last run at 6:05? The last two ferries (6:40 and 7:10) are combined with Bayswater.
It has got to start with the council owned terminal which has been sadly neglected for decades.Give it a major makeover with lots of food options and exploit the views from all sides,Connect it well to the new plaza,get rid of all the cars,and make it a wharf of restaurants that has a ferry NOT a ferry terminal with restaurants. Once the crowds are drawn in by the new dining wharf,the crowds will flow on into the rest of Devonport.
The Devonport people are opposed to the Ports of Auckland Operations they see those as a distraction so maybe the First step is to get rid of Ports of Auckland? They don’t like the Straddle Carriers noise, lights etc.
Those people are idiots. The noise is minimal, especially compared with a motorway, and all those nasty things like cranes and lights are pretty far away and do no damage to Devonport. If they want views of undeveloped green hillsides and quiet waters they can move to Milford Sound. But where would they work? That’s what all the noise and lights are – employment, particularly for a lot of Devonport residents (like me).
Lake rd traffic is bad. So, get rid of the ferry carparking, put in a real bicycle park that isnt exposed to the sea spray and run a frequent ferry and feeder bus service to Takapuna then Akoranga station. The carpark must be on some of the most expensive land in the city, with some of the best views!
A major problem with Devonport is that restaurants need local support – restaurants reliant on tourists, “special trips” and “celebration visits” are not sustainable – especially in winter.
The population of Devonport is not large enough or diverse enough to support more food and beverage. The population of the whole peninsula is about 20K and not growing. Housing in Devonport is too expensive for young people with discretionary income who would support such ventures and this will not be changing anytime soon as the residents have rejected increased density. The existing residents are ex-pats and merchant banker types with large mortgages and families who do not eat out enough to even support the existing restaurants. Take a trip down Victoria Rd at 11pm on a mid-winter’s night and you will see what I mean – it is absolutely dead.
Our only hope is ironically Ngati Whatua (ironically because some of the anti-density fear is anti-brown / “poor people don’t deserve to live here” snobbery). Ngati Whatua own large tracts of ex Navy housing land. Hopefully they will have the economic muscle to overrule the NIMBYs and get some more people onto the peninsula before everything atrophies.
There’s a lot of restaurants doing very well on a mix of locals and visitors as well as tourists. Supporting these places is easy when transport links are easy, so for example with 15-minute ferry frequencies until late a dining precinct effectively becomes an extension of downtown, taking not much more time to get to than the viaduct.
Same going north, if there is frequent public transport going north to say Belmont, Takapuna, and Glenfield then the catchment area supporting local businesses becomes much bigger than just the immediately local population.
It’s comparable to the economic boost from the CRL and integrated fares – the benefits of frequent and affordable public transport are much more than just commuting to work and back.
There are an awful lot of places that are “dead” at 11 pm on a winter night. That’s no criticism of Devonport. Besides, given the residential nature of Devonport why would you want to turn it into another Viaduct Basin? Devonport is *supposed* to be quiet.
Haha true, it’s just making that quiet alternative to the viaduct more accessible and helping business thrive..
This post shouldn’t be interpreted as there being no good restaurants in Devonport. I have lived there for a long time and rarely eat out anyplace but in Devonport.
Also, the idea of turning the ferry car park into open space (or something else that isn’t parking) is not a winner. The Devonport ferry is what makes Devonport such an exclusive place to live, out of the way but easily accessible to the largest concentration of employment in the country, and relieves congestion over the bridge from that part of the North Shore. It’s going to be a parking lot, might as well get used to it. And if it isn’t, ferry headways of an hour or more would be more than adequate.
None of the people taking the ferry are travelling more than 3kms. So easily done by bus or bike.
I am regularly passed on my bike by people driving 500m to the ferries. One guy told me he drives because he is so close he wouldn’t even get his heart rate up. And this is a guy who calls himself an environmentalist and goes for all the fashionable green causes like whales and snails.
I do despair for my fellow human beings at times. Do we deserve to become extinct just for our overwhelming stupidity? The whole species is edging towards a Darwin award.
500m is the sort of distance that even cycling should feel a bit like overkill. You’ve got to haul the bike out from wherever you park it, wheel it out onto the street, put on a helmet*, climb aboard, then find a park and lock it up at the the other end. You’d barely save any time over walking. Which would take you, oh, 5 minutes?
But the setup of the Bayswater Ferry Terminal doesn’t do itself any favours. Taking into account the walk across the marina carpark, there’s almost no-one who lives within a 500m walking catchment at all.
(*we assume).
The big problem is that Devonport lacks any innovation or outstanding restaurants. I grew up there and my Mum still lives there so I regularly visit. It used to be a lot better than now but it was still not a destination I’d have travelled far to visit a restaurant for.
It always amazes me that there are virtually no restaurants, cafes or bars in Devonport with sea views. So the “top quality dining options with unbeatable harbour views” will need some serious development!
I second that comment at how quiet the place is at night. I often go for a run around 9pm and can safely run down the middle of most streets. It’s like something out of “The Quiet Earth”.
Lots of car parks with seaviews though…. get your priorities right.
The housing bubble kills discretionary spending, everyone is at home eating beans on toast and worrying about the mortgage.
But on paper we’re all millionaires! Wheeeeeeee!