Image: Images showing proposed building heights at Central Barangaroo
By WENDY BACON
A partnership between Infrastructure NSW and property developer Aqualand is planning a public land grab that will override previous planning agreements. The developers plan to build high rise offices, expensive apartments and a shopping centre that their critics say will diminish heritage and block iconic views from Observatory Hill and Millers Point.
Awarding winning urban spaces’ architect, Professor Philip Thalis said that if approved, the project will result in the second biggest transfer of public land into private hands in the history of the City of Sydney. The biggest was for the Barangaroo Crown Casino that towers over Darling Harbour and can be seen across a large stretch of Sydney.
Thalis was speaking at a meeting last Sunday at Henry Jensen Centre in the Rocks. The meeting was forced to move outside when numbers attending transformed it into something more akin to a rally.
The meeting was organised by the Millers Point Community Resident Action Group whose President Bernard Kelly described the situation this way: “Sydney Harbour and its foreshore, citizens of Sydney, NSW and visitors to and residents of Millers Point will be severely impacted by [the development] which seeks to triple the size of the approved gross floor area and place the equivalent of two Crown Resort Hotels …on a site that was designed to be the “civic heart” of Barangaroo with lower rise buildings and community facilities adjacent to a harbour foreshore park. The proposal effectively “steals” from the public and “gives” to the private – it is a reverse Robin Hood, it’s robbing the ‘hood!”
Residents’ groups, urban planners and activists, the National Trust, the City of Sydney, and Independent Local MP Alex Greenwich are mobilising to block the plan which is just one of a number of major developments in Central Sydney that the Perrottet government is pushing forward as the March 2024 election looms. Others include a development at North Everleigh, the Central Railway precinct, the Blackwattle Fish markets development and Bays West development near White Bay.
Developers ride roughshod over previous planning agreements
City Hub readers might wonder how a developer could be allowed to override previous planning agreements that protect heritage and public and private views. This proposition relies on a common developers’ tactic which is to seek approval for a concept and then continually apply for modifications of the approval until the original concept is barely recognisable in the completed development. This Modification 9 for Central Barangaroo is the last stage of the NSW government’s massive Barangaroo urban renewal project. The original agreements have already been breached several times and past breaches are even being used to justify more breaches for this development.
Descriptions of the project used by Kelly and other opponents of the Central Barangaroo plan are a stark contrast with the promotional language of Aqualand and its retail partner Scentre that operates 42 Westfield shopping centres. Their ‘vision’ for a waterfront suburb with the “most desirable” offices in Sydney was released exclusively to News Corporation in April this year. Aqualand’s Barangaroo project director, Rod McCoy described it as a “campus style” “cultural and civic precinct”, a place for everyone to ‘visit, explore, enjoy and learn’. A video showed people gliding up escalators from the Metro station or by car into a space filled by greenery and hard concrete surfaces with lots of young people moving in a leisurely way around the site. Birds twitter reassuringly in the background.
If the Department of Planning and Environment (DPE) approve the plan, it will go straight to the Minister for Planning Anthony Roberts for final approval. The deadline for objections (see below) is tomorrow August 8. Already hundreds of objections have been lodged. If the community campaign is not sufficient to persuade DPE assessors not to approve the plan, the only option available to community campaigners will be an expensive appeal to the NSW Land and Environment Court or the NSW Supreme Court.
Harbourside land sacrificed in same old over-development story, says Lord Mayor
City of Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore strongly opposes the Aqualand project. Speaking at the meeting, she said, “This wonderful expanse of harbourside land deserved to be treated sensitively. Instead, we’ve seen the same old Sydney story – over-development, community concerns ignored and the rules of good urban planning trashed by both Labor and Liberal governments in order to give people like James Packer their own special place in the sun.” Like other speakers, she highlighted how the original concept approved in 2007 had been constantly degraded by modifications that put developers’ profits ahead of the public interest.
This planning battle is the latest in decades of struggles to protect the Rocks area. Philip Thalis has been involved in many of those struggles. Fifteen years ago, his architectural partnership Hill Thalis Architecture and Urban Projects won the original NSW government design competition out of 137 entries because it was found to best represent the public interest on the 22 hectare site. Almost immediately, the then Labor government began to move away from the original principles that were supposed to guide the development. According to Thalis, the key principle was that “it should be a public project, .. You will remember that the design brief said half of the size 11 ha. would be public foreshore park and inalienable public land. This is the exact opposite to what’s happened at Barangaroo.”
“We also said there should be a program of public buildings such as community theatres. But in Barangaroo there hasn’t been anything like that except the ‘cutaway’ which is simply a void between a car park and foreshore land which the government still has not clear plan for 15 years later.” He described the original plan for a ” place that was inclusive and that you could just come down to as a member of the public, one to which you wouldn’t need to bring your credit card. It would be a part of the city not a place apart.”
A key element in the history of Millers’ Point was the construction of public housing in the early 20th century. After being saved by the Green Bans in the 1970s, most of this has now been transferred by the NSW LNP government into private hands. Regrettable as that may be, these private owners are part of a new community of residents who are are fighting to protect the heritage environment and public land that continues to attract many Sydney residents and tourists to the area.
Thalis told last Sunday’s meeting that the latest threat to public land follows on from the first stage of Barangaroo which itself was the biggest alienation of public land in the entire history of the city, in which 7.3 ha. was leased to developer Lendlease in a secret deal. This is the equivalent of the whole of Martin Place or the whole of Rocks being given to one player as a play thing. Now the second biggest deal ever gifted to one developer is Central Barangaroo – if it is approved. “While we promise the people of Sydney authentic diversity what we get is two secret deals with two individual companies. This is the opposite to transparent planning. It’s non planning.”
Observatory Point is a place that provides sweeping views around the harbour – that’s how it got its name. Until you turn south where the view is already blocked by the Crown casino. For thousands of years, this headland was used by the Gadigal people. Today it also contains the history of early colonisation.”Not only does it have the Observatory but it allows us all, the public, to walk freely around and survey the harbour. You don’t have to spend money. It’s yours. It’s public land. As was the entire Barangaroo, as was Blackwater Bay in Glebe” said Thalis.
Don’t Block the Rocks
This reporter’s memory of the Rocks goes back a long way to the 1970s when I was one of hundreds of residents who joined Jack Mundey and other Builders’ Labourers in occupying a building to protect the Green Ban that prevented its demolition. As my partner and I left last Sunday’s meeting, we walked up Observatory Hill, past a wedding and picnics, to the lookout. There we met ‘Susie’ a single mother of three adult daughters who had travelled from San Souci in Sydney’s southern suburbs to join the community protest against Central Barangaroo proposal. She was horrified that a favourite family picnic spot would be ruined by a large building that will serve no purpose other than to make extra dollars for rich people out of land that belongs to us all. She always imagined that she would bring her grandchildren on the same affordable holiday excursion that she had enjoyed with her daughters.
Property developers have always had too much power in Sydney but never more than under this government. It will be a tough battle to push back on the Central Barangaroo proposal. You can help by making a submission and following the campaign.
How to make a submission
Submissions can be made until midnight tomorrow August 8.You can make a submission here http://www.majorprojects.planning.nsw.gov.au/index.pl?action=view_job&job_id=6378. If you wish to object, you need to make it clear that you are objecting, not commenting or supporting. Philip Thalis has more analysis and objections to the project on his twitter account @PhilipThalis. The National Trust is also suggesting points for a submission https://www.nationaltrust.org.au/blog/raise-your-voice-protect-sydneys-iconic-historic-views/
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