Cheers for St James Park upgrades

Glebe residents have embraced City of Sydney’s plans to redevelop St James Park following announcements last Saturday.

The plan is based on community consultation undertaken in February and includes a shared 10km/h traffic zone, community garden and a refurbishing of the park’s two tennis courts.

Lord Mayor Clover Moore MP said the shared traffic zone was particularly important from a safety perspective as St James Park and John St Reserve are divided by St James Avenue.

“Given how important our parks are we’ve got to make maximum use of them and if you have a road running between a park you’ve really got to try and link them physically and visually, so I think that’s a really important thing to do.”

Long-time resident and tennis player, Dr Peter Pockley is happy with the plan but is concerned there could be delays in resurfacing the park’s tennis courts.

“They are in fact quite dangerous, there is absolutely no give in the hard court both for the foot and when you fall,” he said. “My wife had two accidents playing on the court, both of which landed her up in emergency because of the falls that she had.”

Dr Pockley and a group of other tennis players have tried to have the resurfacing brought forward but construction is still not due to begin until the middle of 2012.

He also questioned the Council’s decision to remove five parking spaces used by tennis players and other park users.

“We depend on them as the spots in the surrounding streets are nearly always taken up by residential parking.”

Jan Macindoe, Environmental Coordinator of the Glebe Society, welcomed the proposed community garden but warned it could become a source of tension.

“We’ve been trying to find a good location for another garden. There is one in St Johns Rd but it’s not big and there’s usually a waiting list for people to get to use it,” she said.

“[The St Johns Rd garden] has had its ups and downs but it’s been good too. But you have to spend a lot of time thinking how it should be run before it gets going.”

Ms Macindoe was also pleased new trees and plants will provide habitat for Glebe’s blue wrens.

“Some places we know [the birds] were, they’ve disappeared from… So we were very interested in making sure there was the kinds of planting that will provide habitat for small birds as one of our most active projects is the blue wren group,” she said.

By Jack Norton