Personally, I don't mind The Wellington: it might have been more appropriate to the surroundings if it had been a floor or two lower, and perhaps with more of a setback from Cuba St, but I think the architecture is not too bad by current standards. As long as the rents for retailers there don't soar out of the range of the small independent operators that we've come to know and love in Cuba St, that's okay with me.

Some people however, including some of my Wellingtonista colleagues, obviously feel that the tall and somewhat modernist design is out of place with the feel of Cuba St, that façadism is a travesty of heritage, and that your statements about the "improvements" to Cuba St refer only to increases in property values and the loss of uniqueness and raffishness that comes with such gentrification. The only way in which I'd concur with any sentiment about "wrecking" Cuba St is your public support for the bypass: in my opinion, the block between Abel Smith St and Webb St has been well and truly wrecked. Many of us know artists, entrepreneurs and others who were once able to live or work close to the city, but who have seen their living city neighbourhood replaced by a shortcut between suburbs and a soulless, empty "heritage village" that retains absolutely nothing of what made Te Aro special.