PERCY VOSS BOATYARD
After serving his apprenticeship with Harvey & Lang, Percy Voss went out on his own in 1922. Initially working from Poore St, Freemans Bay, in 1937 Voss built a shed and slipway on land leased from Auckland Council on Hamer St.
He continued operating from here until his death in 1972, with Sanford’s taking over the lease in 1978. Auckland Council bought out the lease some years ago and, through Panuku (ex-waterfront Auckland), owns the land, shed and slipway.
The concept of using the Percy Voss boatyard for traditional boatbuilding has been around for more than six years and been championed by several notable people including Sir Bob Harvey. With this in mind, the Percy Voss Charitable Trust (PVCT) was founded in 2012.
According to its chairman, Dr Bruce Donaldson, for over six years the PVCT has offered to provide the necessary funds to restore the shed and slip. While Panuku would retain ownership, in return for PVCT restoring the shed it would be granted a peppercorn lease from Panuku allowing it to operate the yard for traditional timber boat maintenance and boatbuilding. It was also intended the NZTBS use the shed for its boatbuilding courses.
But Donaldson, along with fellow trustee John Street, says the proposal has failed to gain traction because Panuku won’t provide a written Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to PVCT, without which the Trust’s sources of funding, understandably, won’t put up the money.
Panuku has a different spin on this. Roger Macdonald, Chief Executive of Panuku, says “Percy Voss [Charitable Trust] tried to raise the money but unfortunately weren’t successful.”
Donaldson and Street emphatically refute this statement; according to them it was Panuku’s continued refusal to provide a written MOU over the past six years that’s prevented the PVCT proposal going ahead.
In fact, around the time the PVCT was formed, Street obtained $4,500,000 in funding from two individuals with the promise of more if required, plus another $3,500,000 worth of tools, goods and boatbuilding kauri.
Unquestionably, the CYA membership would have provided considerable voluntary labour and, given the vast experience of certain CYA members in running boatyards and slipways, an excellent outcome was a given.
Panuku subsequently obtained funds from Auckland Council for a two-stage restoration. Stage I, the shed’s restoration, has started and is due for completion in September this year. Panuku intends leasing the shed to commercial interests until it receives funding for Stage 2, the slipway restoration, for which it will “apply for funding” in the 2022/23 financial year.
Macdonald confirmed while Panuku will retain ownership, the “intention” is to lease the boatyard to the PVCT or a similar body and that it be “self-financing.” He also said the Percy Voss yard would be used for traditional timber boat maintenance but “it won’t be used for boatbuilding because that requires a lot of additional resources which are just not available in Auckland at the moment.”
Does Panuku have another agenda? Is it to lease the shed to commercial interests, leaving just the slipway for traditional maintenance? If so, the concept of a fully-employed team of traditional boatbuilders and their apprentices having ongoing work, along with the NZTBS having a base, won’t happen.
While it’s understandable Panuku and Auckland Council wish to see a return on their investment, many other public assets such as parks and the boardwalk around Westhaven Marina are built and maintained for the public good with no thought of a financial return.
The Percy Voss shed and slipway restoration could have been done by the PVCT at no cost to Auckland ratepayers and generating tourist dollars years ago when construction costs were considerably lower. With Auckland City’s debt now well over eight billion dollars and climbing, where’s the financial common sense at Panuku?
Auckland Council and Panuku need to factor into their balance sheets a thriving, vibrant traditional boat industry brings a significant tourism return to the city far outweighing any investment in retaining the Percy Voss shed for training in traditional boatbuilding skills.
Local elections are due later this year, is it time for another on-thewater protest?