KOGARAH RESIDENTS FACE THE ENEMIES WITHIN THE GATES
More than 200 men, women, and children packed the Kogarah School of Arts today to talk about the proposed LEP changes soon to be passed by Kogarah Council. Over the course of nearly two hours they heard from speakers including young gun MP for Kogarah Chris Minns, local residents and members of Kogarah.org, an umbrella group formed to address the shortcomings associated with the LEP and educate more people into standing up against unwanted overdevelopment within their area.
Clearly the proposed LEP for Kogarah is all about overdevelopment, and badly planned overdevelopment at that… Issues such as 21m (7 stories) height limits nowhere near railway corridors, highrise up to 39m all through the shopping and business precincts, density increases along the already congested Princes Highway and Rocky Point Rd. among others, removal of waterfront buffers, and total lack of consultation and transparency by Kogarah Council has forced these people to come together and fight what they see as an indignity being wrought upon their suburban lifestyle by the very ones in power who were elected to represent the residents interests, not walk all over them.
No Kogarah councillors chose to be present.
The fact Kogarah Council has not included a biodiversity study seems grounds to make the LEP invalid, said one speaker, a former lawyer with the Land and Environment Court. Not only illegal but also a bold statement by a reckless council who chooses to flaunt the rules in their arrogant push to quickly and quietly steamroll this bloated LEP through while the doors are wide open.
Member for Kogarah Chris Minns voices his concern over the LEP. When even a state MP says it is an overdevelopment then you know something is not right.
I think there is a moment in time when it becomes blindingly clear that the ones we are meant to trust to do the right things for us we can no longer trust, and this moment is now for Kogarah.
Perhaps it underpins a broader social problem nowadays, when even the local council can’t be trusted to bring the best results for its residents, then who can we believe in? Are we at that point where municipal pride has not only flickered away like some 1900s candle, but been highjacked by the deeds of wayward councillors who have clearly forgotten their role in the community, the reason for their position, the pride in their own job?
That lack of public confidence translates into somewhat of a breakdown in society, or at least in society’s values. Is it too much, after all, to expect that our cities and our suburbs, our streets and our schools, won’t be stretched to breaking point by the unwanted development we now find ourselves being repeatedly jabbed with, forcing residents to either scatter like rats or come together in bands to try and salvage what we can of what we see as our right to control our own destiny.
Well today, in Kogarah, the people didn’t scatter… They came in silently, queued on the stairs contently, and crammed the little School of Arts to physically demonstrate their opposition to a flawed and greedy piece of legislation which would only bring gains to council, government and those set to benefit financially from the mass rezoning of land parcels. The average resident can only lose here. And so their voices were heard, in numbers…
I would like to congratulate those involved with Kogarah.org, and all those who took time from their Sunday afternoon to come out and fight for their suburb, to fight against the greed and insanity of this overdevelopment. To fight to have a voice in what happens to their environment, their surroundings, to fight for what happens all around them, for their community. Yes, we all still have a community and it appears nowadays we do have to fight for it. It just seems a shame that the ones we are fighting are the very people we chose to represent us in the first place.
This is the exact type of development we DON’T want for Kogarah – ‘La Vista’, 79-83 Princes Hwy.
Check the Kogarah.org website here for the facts. Get submissions to Council by Friday May 29.
20 REASONS I HATE ‘URBAN RENEWAL’
By Inheritance 2015, inheritance.org.au
They call it ‘Urban Renewal.’ The politicians love it, developers love it, foreign investors love it, my average neighbour doesn’t really want to know about it, but I hate it. And here are a few reasons why…
Urban Renewal is the reason I have to sit in traffic for 25 minutes just to get from one side of my suburb to the other. By car.
Urban Renewal is the reason I have to stand on the edge of the road for 10 minutes and then play chicken to get from one side to the other.
Urban Renewal is why I am forced to look up at overbearing nondescript cheaply constructed boxes of up to 10 stories high in suburban growth ghettos with inadequate parking, natural lighting and open space. Meanwhile affordable blocks of land and perfectly good houses are being swallowed up and kids have to make do with honing their ball skills on Sony Playstations.
Urban Renewal is the reason the sun now sets in my mother’s backyard at 2pm, as it is totally eclipsed by the dark side of a neighbouring block of ‘townhouses’ (ie. units).
Urban Renewal is the reason my favourite row of Federation shops has just been chewed up by bulldozers and reincarnated as some ugly monolithic drab grey box with concrete cancer and render peeling off like snakeskin after only its first full year of inception.
Urban Renewal is why I have to park two streets away if I’m not home by 3pm and three streets away on bin night.
Urban Renewal is just another name for a marketing ploy that sees foreign investors take over our housing stocks and inject large sums of capital into the market to drive prices up and outpace many local buyers out of the possibility of owning their own home, most probably ever.
Urban Renewal is a quick way of propping up the local and state economies by giving people the false impression that it is boom time in the building industry and consumers have got way too much money to burn on housing.
Urban Renewal is the reason there are no more backyards in my neighbourhood. No more trees, no front yards, no side yards, no sparrows, no fairy wrens, no caterpillars, no Green Grocers, no Brown Bakers, no Black Princes, definitely no Yellow Mondays and no butterflies. There is a lot of concrete though, and concrete cancer, and the odd dwarf shrub for border embellishment.
Urban Renewal, funnily enough, assumes everyone wants urban renewal… I don’t. I like my suburb the way it is. That’s why I chose to live there.
Urban Renewal is why there are torrents of rainwater flooding down the gutters of my street from duplex driveways every time the heavens open up. There is nowhere else for the water to go.
Urban Renewal is the reason property developers cruise my suburb in black Audi Q7s eyeing off their next blue ribbon investment that will make them another big brown envelope full of money.
Urban Renewal is a sweeping term that demands blanket slash and burn mentality. Nothing is left of my old neighbourhood – no heritage, no community, no environment, no funky warehouse conversions, no links to the past, no resonating cultural vibes, nothing.
Urban Renewal is a way of turning one block of land into two, three or four and then charging more for each subdivision than the original.
Urban Renewal is why I have to basically fight my way to drive into my local shopping centre/school/health care service. I then have to virtually compete in hand to hand combat in order to find a parking spot, and defy all odds Indiana Jones-style to get my choirs done and return to the car in time before I get a ticket or worse, have to battle through peak hour.
Urban Renewal is the reason I try and stay away from driving anywhere on weekends now. It’s just not worth the effort.
Urban Renewal is why I am too scared to invest all my hard earned savings into the house of my dreams, as who knows what will be built next door to the house of my dreams the minute I move in.
Urban Renewal is why I try not to get too excited about a beautiful old heritage building in my neighbourhood. I find it makes it a lot easier when the thing is replaced by a gaping big hole in the ground next time I jog by.
Urban Renewal is a fallacy that would have us believe the only way to make our suburbs pretty and safe is to knock everything down and build everything new again, this time with dinky shops on the bottom and multiple stories of residential dwellings on top (and lots of basement parking to store our black Audi Q7s). That way we can all be proud of our suburbs. Give me a break.
Urban Renewal is probably the reason why I have to put my child’s name down three years in advance to get her into some overpriced childcare facility. Same with school. It’s probably why I have to get to the train station at 5am to get the only parking available. It’s probably why I have to stand in the train too. And wait at the pharmacy, and the ATM. And get to the park three hours early to reserve a picnic table on a Saturday morning. And line up ten-deep outside the Vietnamese bread shop that does those special pork rolls I like. In fact it’s probably responsible for every little part of my life that I find shitty and annoying.
So thank you, Urban Renewal, you are making such a difference to my life, and will continue to do so, I’d imagine, for some time yet…
DISAPPEARING SYDNEY
Sydney is disappearing… The city we know and love is being lost before our very eyes, sold off and torn apart, opened up and ripped into pieces.
Inheritance the blog was created to document this change and show some of the things we are losing across our city and our state. Inheritance Society and NSW Heritage Network were incorporated to allow like-minded individuals to come together and share their collective views and work towards turning the tide around.
Disappearing Sydney has now been created as a Facebook group to share photos and alert people visually to the loss throughout their own areas.
If you have a camera or a smart phone, you can be part of this group and make a contribution simply by uploading your own photos of buildings and places that are disappearing, sharing them with a wider audience.
It is not fair nor right that our city is being treated this way. Much of the high-rise development that is being pushed by local and state governments is a direct result of offshore foreign investment. Our state government in particular are willingly selling off prime assets and promoting NSW as being ‘open for business’, indulging in high density building frenzies and population growth spurts just so they can stand tall at the next election and claim how viable the economy has become.
But we have our eyes open. We are weary of the fact that they have become addicted to excessive residential building as a tool for injecting large scales of money quickly into the economy. We are aware that they have created an artificial housing boom by promoting foreign investment into exclusively new building projects, a boom that has left many of our next generation of Australians wondering how they will ever be able to afford their own piece of the pie.
We are aware they have watered down heritage and environmental laws to allow full exploitation of real estate potential across the state. And we are aware that our society and our lifestyles are being irreversibly altered and constantly threatened by this excessive race to grow the economy at all costs, in the most aggressive way possible, not by creating new industries and fostering smart technologies, but rather by simply injecting more people and pushing more concrete into the sky.
Indeed we have witnessed the shameless selling out of future generations. Rather than growing to become part of society and working towards a common goal of home ownership, many are left scratching their heads and saying “how will I ever own my own home?”
So much of our heritage is being lost to the building boom and we are constantly watching priceless treasures disappear forever, denying future generations a sense of place and perhaps a sense of understanding of our cultural identity – the visual links of layers of architecture laid down over decades.
All this disappears every time a developer decides to buy up in an area and flaunt lax heritage laws by bulldozing everything within site. Like great trees in the forest that have taken many years to grow and only a brief minute to cut down, so too are our heritage assets so carelessly sacrificed. And what remains is merely a testament to the greed of rapid economic expansion at any cost. What we are left with is an altered sense of culture and identity, a collective mindset that is severed , one that has difficulty reconciling the place of its own heritage in a rapidly changing world. What governments often try to make people forget is that all of this is also completely unsustainable within the context of life on this planet over the coming decades.
Heritage is important… Tangible evidence that people were here before us, often doing the things we do, living their lives, building our society to what it is today. For us to turn our backs on all that and simply bulldoze everything in sight for the quick growth of economy is unjustifiable. Inheritance and Disappearing Sydney seek to address these issues that confront us, not just for now but for generations to follow, because we want to endow these generations with the same chance of discovery that we have had ourselves. We want the cycle to continue. And we want them to be identified and feel a sense of belonging. For without our heritage we certainly are nobody…
URGENT: GOSFORD FUNERAL PARLOUR FACES ITS OWN MORTALITY
A stunning heritage-listed funeral parlour near the waterfront in Gosford that has ushered out the lives of many local identities is itself facing the possibility of an untimely end. Creighton’s Funeral Parlour at 37 Mann Street was built in 1938 in the Art Deco style by architect F. Vanderwyck Snr. The Creighton’s family business was known in the area since 1844 and was involved in building and demolition work before becoming funeral directors in 1872. Six generations of the Creighton family practiced locally under the business name.
The building is treasured not only because of its association with the well renowned family, but because it is such a marvelous and rare example of an Art Deco purpose-built funeral parlour.
Externally, a grand central arch surrounded by decorative red brickwork heralds the main entrance. This is flanked on either side by secondary arches with quality timber framed lead glazed windows, and the theme is continued on the upper floor with a trio of balconettes showing ornate cast iron balustrades, and three magnificent streamlined parapets at roof level surging into the sky. Decorative balustrades also surround the lower windows. The construction is of textured cement rendered brick, comprising two stories at Mann Street, sloping back steeply to become one storey at the rear.
On the Georgiana Terrace side (left hand, facing) is an enclosed balcony made of locally quarried rock-faced ashlar sandstone while on the opposite wing is a sandstone garage consisting of twin Tudor arches and matching parapet. Behind the garage doors are open concrete pits to allow access for working on the funeral hearses. This has been currently re-purposed as a cocktail bar, showing clever use of a heritage asset. Rather interestingly, the roofline on the Georgiana Terrace side is scalloped while the garage side is straight-lined.
Internally, a central porch leads to the house chapel that extends below street level and is surrounded by small offices. An interesting feature are the backlit frosted glass windows obviously created due to a lack of natural light filtering into the room. Original drawings for the floorplans show that very little has been changed since 1938.
The parlour is located right in the middle of an identified heritage precinct containing several unique buildings, some of which the Creighton family were involved in constructing, including the heritage-listed 1929 former School of Arts directly opposite. According to the Australian Govt. heritage database:
‘The site is located on the main street of Gosford within a precinct of civic and commercial buildings, including Gosford Council Administration Building, the Sydney Electricity building, the Old Gosford Court House and Police Station (now a branch of the Conservatorium of Music), the School of Arts building, the Post Office, Gosford Public School and several churches including a small sandstone church designed by Blacket. This precinct is located near Gosford Wharf which served as the main transport link to the area before the railway was opened in 1887. With the opening of Gosford Railway Station, the main commercial area re-established itself about 0.5km to the north in close proximity to the station, leaving the earlier civic buildings in a group near the wharf.’
Such a beautiful, rare and significant local building that has indeed been heritage-listed because of its qualities should never come under threat. However current owners Zenith have submitted a DA to turn it into a 15 storey skyscraper with 4.51:1 floor space ratio while only retaining the façade of the original Creighton’s funeral parlour, completely overwhelming any heritage reference to the site while destroying the interiors and the structural make up of the building.
Original drawing for 37 Mann St. Note structural design changes. Source Gosford Library.
Development plans loom large, courtesy Kay Williams
This outcome is simply unacceptable. While the developers will claim they are retaining the façade, the fact is they are destroying the heritage of the building and simply paying lip service to what has stood there and served the people of Gosford since the pre-WW2 era. There is no way that sticking a façade onto the end of a 127 apartment vertical glass monster is any substitute for the genuine heritage this site commands. What’s more is that the façade of the parlour will not be able to be left standing in situ while excavation takes place all around it. Rather, it will be deconstructed and pasted back together as an afterthought using new artificially aged and recycled materials, meaning the original fabric of even the façade will be completely falsified.
While we may not be able to stop unsightly highrise development from infecting waterfront areas up and down the eastern seaboard of Australia, we certainly should be able to stop the wanton destruction of locally listed heritage assets such as this one. The DA, being rushed through council currently, only allows comments until 24 September. The controversial rezoning of the site to a 36m height limit by council has opened the door for this kind of overdevelopment. I strongly urge people to use the link on the council website to oppose the demolition of this building in any shape or form by clicking here. Even a simple comment is helpful.
Remember, September 24 is the cut-off date. Save local history Gosford City Council, do not even think about sacrificing this very unique heritage treasure. A façade is not heritage. It is only a glimpse of what was once there…
Images from 2006 by Spike Anderson.
Oozing Deco charm… Images from 2006 by Spike Anderson.
Balconette with balustrade. Images from 2006 by Spike Anderson.
Lovely rounded corners. Images from 2006 by Spike Anderson.
A more current image, with eccentric colour scheme. Image: Then and now.com
Internal chapel. All this would be lost under the DA. Image Rappoport Pty Ltd.
Internal chapel ceiling plaster detail. All this would be lost under the DA. Image Rappoport Pty Ltd.
OUR SECOND BIRTHDAY & HERITAGE BRIEF AUGUST 2014
Well, time flies and we’ve already notched up two years within the blogosphere here on these pages of Inheritance…
It seems just about ripe for a format change too, as it becomes increasingly difficult to keep up with the state of heritage loss currently being enacted all around us… time constraints, life getting in the way, etc. etc. and more openly it’s getting a little monotonous writing the same old story that generally reads something like this: “beautiful building neglected, beautiful building acquired by developer, developer knocks down beautiful building, ugly big building rises where beautiful building once stood…”
I had thought we would be learning collective lessons by now and while I believe the general public may be cottoning on ever so slowly, single-minded politicians and the development lobby still hold the trump cards and aren’t afraid to use them to keep the current wave of urban renewal riding off strongly into the sunset. Meanwhile residents are held to ransom and left to watch in horror as wonderful heritage assets are systematically stripped from their neighbourhoods wherever the wrecking ball of developers decides it wants to swing.
So now we will take a more general overview of current heritage issues, in order to cover more ground more succinctly and keep updating while still maintaining the original focus of publicizing heritage neglect and destruction that keeps people like me in business and gives us something to do with all our otherwise misguided energies…
Heritage Brief August 2014
Art Deco waste in Chatswood
Another day, another demolition… This time it will be a beautiful art deco block of units at 745 Pacific Highway, Chatswood which sold in late 2013 for a reported $3.5 million and will be replaced by, you guessed it, another modern block of shop-top apartments reaching five stories in height and no doubt maximising real estate value of the highway frontage by leaning right over the footpath and every border of the property.
A shame to see the beautiful stylised brickwork of this building and symmetrical forms sacrificed for more faceless monolithic residential stock. No building that replaces it will ever have the same level of workmanship or quality of design that this art deco wonder had, that much I can guarantee. So it’s overdevelopment 1: heritage nil.
Google streetview of the address.
If anyone is local and handy with a screwdriver I would suggest going over and salvaging this beautiful set of art deco doors from the jaws of the bulldozers. The owners obviously don’t care and shame on council for not making removal of doors and fittings part of the deal.
Image Dominic Kennelly
Ramsgate shops lost
Not much was left of this charming row of Federation shops along Rocky Point Road in Ramsgate. A real estate agent in a shopfront to one side had originally opposed the DA (surprisingly), and for some time their little corner of the site was left standing. Now they too have decided it was a better option to get out, leaving nothing behind of the heritage architecture but a gaping hole in the ground soon to be filled with more units that actually rise above what the local DCP allows for by a massive two stories. With Rockdale council controlling one side of Rocky Point Rd. and Kogarah Council the other, it seems both parties have engaged in a race to decide who can ruin their side of the street the quickest. (For more info read here). Overdevelopment 2: heritage nil.
These charming heritage shopfronts are now gone .
Princes Hwy, Highway to Hell
Further along at Princes Highway Rockdale, the story emerged of an elderly couple who decided they didn’t want to sell their family home of 60 years, when a massive eight storey development took shape next door. Instead of bowing to the pressure by developers, Barry and Betty Dickson decided to stay put, and after several months of jack hammering and earth moving going on just over the fence, health effects are starting to take their toll on the resolute couple… perhaps they regret not moving after all.
But then again, “you show me where there’s a house on a corner block with room to park five vehicles close to the hospital and with a shed” said Barry to Fairfax reporters. Let’s hope he can continue to live the way he wants to, without too much bad karma from the ruthless encroachment of land grabbing all around. Overdevelopment 3: heritage nil.
“Honey… I think the neighbours have moved out…”
Nearby on the corner of the rapidly changing Gray St, an old converted Federation doctor’s surgery is about to make way for ever more units. This street is also home to the yet to be opened new Emergency Department of St. George Hospital, and every house opposite (currently old cottages) is on the chopping block. Quite an interesting planning strategy, putting a new ambulance thoroughfare on one side and multiple blocks of units on the other, considering the street is already gridlocked during peak hours. I hope nobody I know will be waiting for an ambulance once this is completed, it may be a nervouse wait… Overdevelopment 4: heritage nil.
Corner Gray St. and Princes Hwy.
The old and new rub shoulders uncomfortably on Gray St.
The sun sets on these Princes Highway cottages.
The sign says it all. Princes Highway, Kogarah.
Kogarah is gone…
Expect to see much more desecration around Kogarah. At the council meeting of July 29, the motion to send the new ‘Kogarah Housing Strategy 2031’ to the NSW Department of Planning to go on exhibition, was won by 10 votes to 1. One councillor, Lachlan Mclean, who prides himself on not supporting overdevelopment, made these comments against the motion:
The proposal is an extreme overdevelopment of North Ward and I refer to 3 key examples that will anger residents and ultimately detract from our lifestyle:
1) The change to allow buildings of up to 11 storeys or 33 metres in peaceful residential streets such as Palmerston Street, Victor Street, Victoria Street and Stanley Street.
2) The change to allow buildings of 39 metres on Railway Parade backing onto Bellevue Street and the Kogarah South Heritage Conservation Area.
3) The change to allow buildings of 21 metres or up to 7 levels on the Princes Highway backing on to John Street in Kogarah Bay and Wyuna Street in Beverley Park.
…Some will say, let the proposal go to the Department and then let the residents have their say. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that so many North Ward residents will be outraged by these changes and I don’t want to put them through the stress of having to justify why 11, 12 or 13 storeys shouldn’t happen next door to them.
…This proposal doesn’t strike the right balance and won’t provide residents with a better lifestyle. It is all very well to speak about the needs of future generations, but there is no evidence that the necessary infrastructure will be in place to support these changes – our roads will be gridlocked and will struggle to cope with future population growth.
Wise words indeed from the North Ward councillor. Yet his thoughts are clearly in the minority on this council. Kogarah, unfortunately, like many other suburbs, has NO chance of a sensible planning strategy now. Well done Lachlan for rejecting the draft. Shame on you, Kogarah Council, for burying your ratepayers in high rise, many of whom, wouldn’t even see it coming.
Sports Club calls last drinks
South Hurstville Sports Club has become the latest casualty in the shrinking world of bowling clubs closing its doors after 57 years of service. The struggling club called for last drinks on Saturday June 28 as they move to amalgamate with nearby Peakhurst Bowling Club. The classic Art Deco building is owned by the Catholic Education Office, and we strongly hope the owners will be able to repurpose the wonderful architecture, however no plans have been announced for the site. I will be personally contacting the Catholic Education Office to suggest this.
This news comes on the back of the St George Bowling Club at Rockdale being completely demolished by council after arsonists caused damage to the roof structure. This was a superb piece of architecture on a prime ‘development site’ and it appears Rockdale council have done nothing to save it. (For more info read here).
The club’s closure after 57 years. Image John Verge, Fairfax.
It never ceases to astonish me that every time a club like this closes, more isn’t done to protect the site from private development. The local population are losing amenity, a place to congregate, a place to mingle, to socialise, and to gather… When that former social space becomes a closed door development, the whole community loses out, especially the elderly.
Kyle Bay’s future outlook
Nearby at picturesque Kyle Bay, residents are fighting to keep their leafy bay ‘leafy’, after a hushed rezoning push-through and development has been proposed for the 24,000 square metre Kyle Williams estate. The privately-owned bushland site that currently occupies much of the expensive hillside is much loved by locals who fear the loss of natural amenity. Indeed this is one of the last natural areas of remaining bushland so close to the mouth of Georges River.
The land was bequeathed by Caroline Milne Williams who ran a respite home for convalescing children until her death in 1939. Currently the heritage-listed Legacy House continues that tradition on site, however the Greek church-affiliated Estia Foundation is proposing a massive and potentially uncapped expansion via the rezoning. More than 200 objections have been sent to council.
For those who water down concerns of residents stating they only want to hold on to their million dollar views, well, wouldn’t you? If you invested into a house and suburb with a certain natural outlook, and all of a sudden that outlook is threatened, and the prospect of watching new development rise up becomes a reality, then why wouldn’t you complain… Amenity of the estate is not the issue here, it is suitability of the site. Overdevelopment 5: heritage nil.
The (currently) bushy vistas over Kyle Bay. Image Kyle Bay Residents Association.
Outside Sydney
Gosford council recently looked at a motion to rename Brisbane Water and the Broadwater ‘Mariners Cove’, however the motion was defeated after observers including our own NSW Heritage Network scrutinized the renaming in connection to the Central Coast Mariners football club, of which Gosford City Council is an official major partner. And rightfully so – if renaming of geographic sites starts here, where will it end – ‘Bluetongue Bay’ or ‘The Coffee Club Ranges’…?
In Eden, the case of Hotel Australasia has gone before the Land and Environmental Court recently as a Section 34 mediation, as the developer Great Southern Developments tries to sell the merits of a third supermarket in a town that doesn’t really need it, on the site of the historic and characteristic local pub. The result as it now stands will see the hotel completely demolished.
The developer had indicated they would spare the 1951 front skin of the building while seeking financial compensation of $460,000 for lost rental space as a result of retaining the facade, but council decided this was too much to pay, leaving concerned residents and local heritage with nowhere to stand. Hotel Australasia has long been described as the ‘heart and soul’ of Eden, now the township will have to survive without it.
This is what happens when mediocre councils shy away from heritage listing in the first instance – you lose old pubs and so forth, you get big developments cropping up, parking and congestion issues to boot, and supermarkets nobody needs. Not the best outcome for a town like Eden. (For more info read here).
The Hotel Australasia as it stands now. Image Inheritance
And the saga of Avoca Beach Theatre continues… It has been reported that council is seeking donations from the cinema owner under a Voluntary Planning Agreement (or VPA) to allow for a redevelopment of the cinema that, again, none of the locals seem to want or need. These costs will cover refurbishment of adjoining Hunter Park, and resurfacing of a nearby carpark (without providing extra parking spaces). It should be noted that the redevelopment will not include any onsite parking for theatre-goers or staff… None. It should also be noted that the redevelopment also includes luxury apartments that will directly overlook the park.
And so it appears that the owner may well be able to do whatever they want, provided they throw generous amounts of money in the general direction of council. Ahhh democracy, it’s a wonderful thing… (For more info read here). (For an interesting video link click here).
If you have any local issues to cover, please email inheritance@tpg.com.au with the subject Heritage Brief.
THE CHANGING FACE OF FORSTER-TUNCURRY
Sydneysiders are familiar with the seaside holiday town of Forster on the NSW mid north coast. Many of us have spent summer vacations in and around the centre, with its abundant beaches, rivers and lakes offering plenty of outdoor activities for the visitor. As a result of this popularity the skyline of Forster (and its twin town Tuncurry to the north) has burst sharply skyward over the years, as open real estate around the town becomes scarcer and developers move in to take advantage of the area’s cashed up holiday rental crowds.
On my last visit, I found something I didn’t really expect – a formerly sleepy seaside hamlet on the verge of much bigger things. Already several big towers have sprung up creating more of a Gold Coast style resort, leaving in their shadows vast chasms of crumbling vestiges of bygone days; fibro beach shacks and modest brick freestanding cottages, all but now slowly disappearing under the growing weight of modern skyscrapers.
What amazes me is the speed at which Forster and towns like it are changing, and just how easy we are to throw away any pieces of our past like scraps of bone to a hungry dog. Every corner you turn in Forster you see For Sale signs propping up decrepit buildings, or safety barriers around abandoned houses and 60s era motels, as they are no longer seen as profitable and either left to rot or handed over to caretaker real estate agents to find suitable developer buyers who have no qualms about turning these little slices of history into contemporary piles of rubble, with their high volume high density money making concrete cubes rising from the ashes…
So who will miss these vestiges, these quaint beach style fibro and brick cottages with their dried up gardens of hibiscus and frangipani that have served their purpose well over the years but just don’t make the cut anymore in this profit orientated, market driven, real estate focused society we call Australia?… I for one. I see the beauty in these buildings, these modest, airy, charming, homely remnants of a disappearing world that have been unashamedly sold out exclusively for the real estate value of the dirt on which they sit.
I believe the council and state government should be looking at the heritage value of certain examples of this style of Australian coastal architecture, c.1920s – 1960s and preserving them rather than allowing wholesale destruction, and at the same time applying the brakes to the total redevelopment of coastal towns like Forster, which is occurring more rapidly than many would like.
‘Tikki Village’, pictured below, is one example of a land sale that recently occurred for over a million dollars, presently holding several ornate little fibro cabins that serve the community with cheap long term rental options, but zoned for medium density development and at risk of being turned into towers.
If you want to see the real Forster, the old Forster as it was, you’d better go soon as much of it is rapidly changing. Locals are quick to point out how the character of the place is briskly disappearing, never to return as it was. Below is a gallery of photos of the town, including ‘Tikki Village’, but be warned, many of the buildings shown won’t be there for very much longer, or may in fact already be gone.
All photos copyright Inheritance.
THREE GENERATIONS OF BAY ST. FELLED FOR UNITS
Three generations of architecture sitting side by side are to make way for units along Rockdale’s busy Bay Street leading down to historic Botany Bay. A simple 1800s workers’ cottage, a free standing Victorian villa complete with original slate roof, and a brown brick Federation have been vacated and await demolition surrounded by a fence of doom, in an area that has the highest expansion rate for unit building currently in the state. A DA to turn the site into 19 strata units was lodged in December 2013 by applicants J & M Faddoul Pty Ltd, at a building cost of $3,275,000.
Rockdale Council seems to find no heritage value in these items that have stood for more than a hundred years and overlooked the constant march of progress stemming up from Botany Bay and down from the town centres where Thomas Saywell’s famous steam tram once traversed. Instead more and more units have now become the order of the day. Even a now rare workers’ cottage can’t stand in the way, nor a stunning double storey Victorian villa with many ornate original features, reminiscent of the recently lost Griffith House on the grounds of nearby St George hospital.
It seems an unnecessary shame that buildings like this are allowed to be felled continuously in this so-called enlightened age, in fact the rate of heritage loss seems to be increasing as large swathes of Sydney are rezoned for unit development, a trend which will no doubt spell the end for many similar buildings especially in areas such as Rockdale, where councils simply don’t have a clue as to their duty of guardianship, choosing rather to tow the Liberal state government line of urban renewal at all costs.
Rockdale Council is currently assessing another potential overdevelopment on the nearby Darrell Lea site on Rocky Point Road. The chocolate factory is to make way for between 350 and 600 dwellings, rising over the 3.3 hectare site in towers up to 12 stories high, within a LEP that currently allows four. In order to accommodate this scale of development, the land would have to be rezoned to R4 high density residential, a move which Rockdale Fifth Ward Ratepayers Association disagrees with, citing privacy, traffic congestion, and lack of amenities (there is no rail station nearby). However Rockdale Council has already adopted a motion to support the planning proposal, meaning residents may just be left as innocent bystanders in the process. Long live democracy in Australia… At least the developers have theirs.
All images by Inheritance. Click on gallery below for slide show.
East West elevation of 93-97 Bay St Rockdale.
North South elevation of 93-97 Bay St Rockdale.
Photo render of the development, 93-97 Bay St Rockdale.
HAZZARD AND HERITAGE: A MATCH MADE IN HELL
On the Australia Day Weekend and in light of the recent news of the historic Jolly Frog hotel in Windsor being gutted by fire, we take a look at the dire state of heritage in one of our most treasured precincts and the case Planning Minister Brad Hazzard has to answer for…
Brad Hazzard has been at the helm of the Planning Department in NSW for a number of years now, and the crowning factor of his tenure has been his ruthless insistence to push through overbearing developer-biased planning reforms on to an unsuspecting public on every front, with scant regard for residents’ wishes or indeed what were once considered commonsense controls.
In a clearly sneaky and contentious move, Minister Hazzard approved the controversial Option 1 road project through Thompson Square at Windsor just five days before Christmas 2013, obviously trying to sneak another trick beneath the public’s wary gaze just as everybody was gearing up for the summer holidays.
Thompson Square is Australia’s oldest surviving public square, and the attempted push-through of this project goes some way to highlight the contempt this government has for the heritage of NSW. A total lack of heritage knowledge, a combined political bully-boy mindset of which pure ignorance is at the heart, a ‘leave nothing to the people’ thuggish mentality is the only way I can describe it.
It reminds me of an old example in Vienna, Austria, where in the late 1980s a large postmodern glass sheeted building known as Haas Haus was inflicted upon Vienna’s most important public square, Stefansplatz, directly overlooking the Stefansdom, Vienna’s grand Gothic-Romanesque cathedral. The building was roundly criticized at the time and still remains ridiculously out of place and in fact completely unnecessary in the context of the historic Baroque-lined market square. The point here is, what may seem like a good idea by a small group of hard-nosed bureaucrats at the time, has long lasting consequences and in fact can severely scar or even totally deface an important historic precinct long after those few decision-makers have waltzed out of parliament with their golden pensions in hand.
Haas Haus in Vienna, infringing on Stefansdom. Photo by Rory Hyde.
At least in Vienna, they seem to know when to stop… Closer to home, in Sydney’s Circular Quay, a similar issue, with the so-called ‘Toaster’ building occupying pride of place next to our iconic Opera House and crowding the shores of the famous harbour with square glass and metal shapes. And more recently, the Museum of Contemporary Art building extension, the so-called ‘Mordant Wing’ (or ‘moron wing?’), causing even more conflict with the surrounding heritage of the public space, introducing oversized flat black and white cubes into a maritime precinct that was characterised by sandstone Georgian and Art Deco architecture. This wing was added without the usual input from the Heritage Council, the very overseer that Hazzard and O’Farrell’s government are trying so hard currently to stifle.
Windsor’s Thompson Square is equally under threat, not from any one particular unsympathetic building, but rather a ghastly modern road cutting through the side of the square and continuing over the historic crossing on a suspended concrete byway replacing the oldest bridge on the Hawkesbury River.
Riders approach the Square. Image CAWB.
Raising the Flag. Image CAWB.
The Eureka Flag flies in defiance over Australia’s oldest square. Image CAWB.
Residents’ action group CAWB has fought hard to keep this destruction at bay, enduring six months of continuous occupation of the square, and raising awareness of the need to protect such a historic site as their beloved Windsor. Noted historians and heritage architects such as Clive Lucas and high profile celebrities have added their voices to the campaign, the latest being Wendy Harmer on Australia Day 2014.
The CAWB, in its media release, says “In approving this strategically inept project, Minister Hazzard has ignored the overwhelming evidence of the government’s own experts…evidence that demonstrates this project fails to deliver on traffic, flooding and heritage.”
Unfortunately, in another blow for local heritage, the nearby heritage-listed and historically linked Jolly Frog hotel, unoccupied for a year, was gutted by fire on 20th January in unusual circumstances. Fire crews were called to the blaze around 9.45pm to find the building well alight, and a crime scene has since been established to determine the cause of the fire. CAWB fear this may pave the way for a wider road leading in to Windsor and through the Square, and say the hotel should and must be rebuilt, not demolished thereby further eroding the heritage values of the area.
The Jolly Frog hotel up in flames. Image NSW Incident Alerts Facebook page.
Brad Hazzard, the Minister for Planning, and Robyn Parker, Minister for Heritage and the Environment, as well as Barry ‘the wrecker’ O’Farrell, should be standing up and working towards viable solutions for situations such as Thompson Square, not bulldozing their way through the tide of public angst currently on show. They are clearly ignoring their elected responsibilities as a government for the short-sighted aims that don’t really make any sense to the average Australian citizen.
Why are they intent on destroying this historic square, this wonderful vestige of Governer Macquarie’s legacy, this scenic and picturesque river crossing, this peaceful place bathed in colonial history? Why are they intent on replacing a two-laned bridge with another, uglier, more brutal, out-of character, two-laned bridge? Is it for CSG mining trucks to get more easily to the western escarpments as some have suggested? It defies logic.
Hazzard, O’Farrell, Parker and co.; you have so much to answer for in only your first term. You are a failure of government. You are intent on bulldozing our irreplaceable heritage at every turn, rather than performing your sworn duty of protecting it. You should be ashamed of your actions, and just because you are wielding the axe of power at the present moment, doesn’t mean your time of judgement won’t come soon enough. Tens of thousands of us are already judging you, we are casting a watchful eye over your actions in the fields of heritage, the environment, and sustainable development, and without surprise, you have unanimously failed in every respect in just your first term. We dearly hope, that you won’t be allowed to enter a second term, for the sake of what little is left after your torrid demolition spree over the entire state.
Would you trust this man with protecting OUR heritage? That would be Hazzardous.
Main title image: Hazzard and Heritage, Inheritance 2014.
Read about the Government’s Planning Reforms here.
ST GEORGE UNDER SIEGE EPILOGUE: ‘DEVELOPER’S PARADISE’
Welcome to Princes Highway, Rockdale… Constant choking traffic four lanes thick. Peak hour that lasts all day and is unrelenting in gridlock. Heavy vehicles, dump trucks full of excavation rubble from nearby building sites thundering past on their way to the tip. Smog heavy in the air. Noise from bulldozers and pile drivers, dust passing over in blanketing clouds…
Rapid redevelopment. As soon is one hole is filled in another is dug. Big gaping holes in the ground everywhere. Buildings that stood for many years, tumbling like dominoes, one after the other. Proud buildings that once lined the roads in a human scale, now trashed and forgotten. New people coming and going from every direction filling the spaces. Any sense of belonging, gone from this picture. Any sense of community seems not to exist…
Footpaths dirtied and deserted. Building sites line both sides of the road, competing for size and domination, left, right, and centre. More ground ripped open, houses and history torn apart. Bricks fall into rubble only to be swept away into manageable piles. Advertisements in real estate windows written in Mandarin lure the new money investors. A sign above an entry door to a store reads “Shopping Paradise”… but I don’t see a shopping paradise, nor any other kind. The only thing I see is a Developer’s Paradise…
You may think this is a place far away, of another country, another mindset even, but you would be wrong… This is your Sydney, this is the future, and this is only a sign of things to come. Welcome to Princes Highway, Rockdale. Welcome to your future…
All images Inheritance. Click on image for slide show.
ST GEORGE UNDER SIEGE 3: ‘UNITS, UNITS, EVERYWHERE!’
Residents of the St George area are certainly feeling ‘growing pains’ of late. It seems each time you turn around you see another block of units going up. If you are lucky you may be able to catch a glimpse of the builder’s fence of doom surrounding a heritage cottage before it is swiftly disassembled, smashed up and torn down. In its place inevitably rises something far bigger and of greater scale and bulk, sometimes ludicrously so, to the extent that neighbours’ views are extensively impeded, solar access is significantly reduced and general streetscape ambience is destroyed. Nowadays it is not strange in the St George area to see a small cottage sitting side by side with a newly completed six storey block of units. As I’ve said before it is no longer a case of the development fitting in with the street, it is now becoming a case of the street fitting the development.
Residents’ concerns are being totally ignored at both council and state government levels. It seems that growth of the building industry is the ultimate goal at any cost, and the St George area appears to be an epicentre of overdevelopment at the moment, just as the formerly leafy suburbs of Kuring-gai have become over the past few years. If you want to see the impacts of unrealistic population growth and what happens when the building industry is slated as the next economic windfall after mining, come and have a look at some of these areas. A walk around Hurstville or along the Princes Highway Rockdale will put you in no doubt as to where the future of this city is headed.
Recently a number of Development Applications and approvals have raised alarm bells for groups of surrounding residents who try to cling bravely to some semblance of what their suburbs represent, of the lifestyles and the atmosphere they have invested into over many years, often an entire lifetime. They have made the choice to live here for certain reasons, under certain conditions, and that inevitably comes down to quality of life, being part of a community, living in suburbs that aren’t dominated by highrise but instead offer a variety of building styles; free standing homes with gardens, trees and open space, respect for heritage. This is all being stripped from many suburbs of St George at breakneck speed. And unfortunately many unit developments are based around financial targets that mean fitting as many individual dwellings onto the land parcel as possible, which is in direct conflict to preserving open, low rise, garden suburbs and healthy community lifestyles.
Planning Gone Mad…
In Kogarah recently a DA was lodged to redevelop a freestanding building at 44 Montgomery St with a total of 31 units, half being studio sized, on a site with a frontage of only 12.19m. Despite not complying with council minimum standards for site width, floorspace ratio, height, setback and carparking, the DA was somehow approved by council. The nine storey building will be shoehorned onto a site so tiny and with such limited vehicular access that a car lift will need to be installed to get cars in and out of the pokey basement. The owner claims that such lifts are commonplace in Europe – maybe in the centre of Paris, yes, but in the backstreets of suburban Kogarah, really? The local Chamber of Commerce has made strong complaints to council, who clearly are out of touch with their constituents. This comes at a time when peak train services are being culled from the bustling railway station of Kogarah – that’s right, not increased, culled.
44 Montgomery St, One freestanding dental surgery to become NINE storeys.
The dentist-developer now has a healthy grin. Image Fairfax.
In Carlton on the site of an old plant nursery at 399-403 Princes Highway big growth has been announced for a structure that towers six storeys over the surrounding mostly single storey houses in an area governed by a DCP that allows only two stories maximum. Neighbours rightly believe this kind of development doesn’t belong in their quiet suburb, and would set an unsuitable precedent for future growth of the area. Railway transport is nowhere near this development, neither are grocery shopping centres or other facilities. Moreover, they argue, is why should a developer be allowed “to exceed planning controls, not by 100 percent, but by 200 percent?”
New plans for the old nursery site. Six storeys here is like development on Dynamic Lifter. Image Fairfax.
At Sans Souci and Ramsgate several large blocks of units are either rising or have been proposed along Rocky Point Rd, with little or no regard for residents’ wishes. Cottages are disappearing with their gardens, and being filled with multi-storey apartments… The site of the Darryll Lea chocolate factory is one such example, with plans recently revealed to convert the industrial site occupied since 1963 into residential highrise after the confectionary business moves out in September 2014. It is then that 430 dwellings will be squeezed onto the 3.3 hectare site in buildings of up to 12 storeys high, producing a sweet financial result for former owners of the bankrupt business the Lea family, but perhaps a sickly aftertaste in the mouth for nearby residents and commuters who have to battle traffic along the busy thoroughfare every day. Again the rail corridor is nowhere near this site, only adding to congestion on the already ‘Rocky Roads.’
The famous Darryll Lea chocolate site. The Lea family will win a sweet windfall from real estate values after failing dismally as bonafide business operators.
Nearby at Ramsgate Beach another plot, a former caravan park on the Grand Parade known as the Grand Pines and famous for offering caravan and cabin holiday rentals on the shores of Botany Bay within site of the city, is being turned into a 51 dwelling townhouse complex. Quite a tight fit for a narrow site in quiet suburbia, and like the others, nowhere near railway transport.
Another site nearby at 183-189 Rocky Point Rd. intends taking over a petrol station and three heritage shopfronts, bulldozing and remodelling with 65 residential units, much to the despair of surrounding neighbours who will have to look over their back fence at a concrete wall six storeys in height. The DA started life as a 41 apartment complex five storeys high with retail component, but the local Ramsgate DCP allows only four storeys. Interesting that what is proposed now is a six storey monolith comprising 65 units, many of small scale with no cross-ventilation, eight commercial tenancies and basement parking.
‘Six does go into four’… This site is set to become six storeys, under a local DCP that allows only four. You do the math. Kogarah Council can’t.
Ramsgate’s ‘Rocky Road’… service stations are making way for extreme development.
Rocky Point Road. These Federation heritage shopfronts will be bulldozed soon…
Directly opposite, these will be the replacements… bulky, square, obtrusive, frightfully ugly money makers… Note the driveway access cutting straight through the footpath.
By comparison, the southern side of Ramsgate maintains buildings of a more suitable scale and character.
But this scenario is mirrored all along Rocky Point Road, such as the 18.85 metre tall block at 124-144 Rocky Point Rd known as the Jameson. This site has been under construction for several years already and has been constantly evolving even as it is being built. Just recently the developer lobbied to apply for extra single bedroom units to bring the total from 70 to 77. The alterations were passed by Rockdale Council officers without the councillors being involved. In actual fact it is surrounded by single storey homes and the odd two storey shop, nothing on the scale that we are seeing come up here. The nearest railway transport is literally miles away and bus services in the area are already overstretched. Traffic is gridlocked at certain times of the day and about to get much worse on this main north-south artery.
The Jameson. A monolith rising above a quiet suburban landscape.
Like the wild, wild west…
I haven’t even mentioned some of the really massive developments going up around Rockdale, Hurstville (such as the former Dominelli Ford caryard known as Highpoint with 320 units proposed for completion 2015-16), Kogarah (such as the former Kogarah Mecca theatre site known as Grand Central comprising 92 units due for completion next year). And then there is the former Amcor Packaging site on Forest Road Hurstville now known as East Quarter, a series of massive towers taking over the landscape. All of these projects are selling off the plan, many to offshore investors in China keen to park their money somewhere ‘safe’ like Australia. Their gain may be to our childrens’ detriment, but who in power is really concerned about that…?
Hurstville Councillors Jack Jacovou and Nancy Lui spruiking the benefits of highrise at the East Quarter, gleaming with pride. Click for Leader story. Image Fairfax Media.
New precedents are being set, and quiet, suburban streetscapes are being radically transformed all over the area. Perhaps this is a sign of things to come under the Premier’s new planning reforms being passed through the NSW Upper House now, perhaps it is a sign of developer-biased decisions made in councils that turn healthy profits and show total disregard for community values, perhaps it is just the fate of a city that has chosen to grow at such a rate that it has forsaken its own residents in favour of accommodating many more new arrivals, at levels that simply are not desirable nor sustainable at any measure of the imagination.
Like a wild west gold rush these forces are being played out to the detriment of all around, and like a wild west gold rush some will get rich very quickly, but the effects of the methods and the physical scars will be felt on the surrounding environment for many years to come, and probably never will be fully reconciled.
Following gallery all images by Inheritance. Please click on the image for a slide show. Please read the captions as they describe even more obtrusive development in the area.
Title image at top of page is new development on Princes Highway, Kogarah. Image by Inheritance.
But wait, there’s more! Please find the time to watch these disturbing ACA videos. This describes some of the frightful planning decisions being enacted on Rocky Point Road, and is what can now happen to anyone if they just happen to find their home next door. Click on both images below, thank you.
Click here for ACA video #1
Click here for ACA video #2
Inheritance 