Half-Assed Heritage
Talk about half way measures: on 09/09/09 the State government announced it would demolish half of each heritage shop on Union Square, thus only half ignoring a union Green Ban on the site. After thousands rallied in the Square on the 4th of July, the CFMEU unanimously voted to refuse to work on a row of small family shops, which have housed local small businesses since the 19th century. In making his announcement to the press, Transport Minister David Campbell claimed the Union Street terraces had been saved and would be integrated into a train station: only the back half of the family shops would be demolished, though all of the land would be compulsorily acquired by the State. Who said progress doesn’t carry a price tag? If several small family run businesses are railroaded out of town along the way, it is only because their owners can be bullied and their properties bulldozed at a cheaper price.
The government’s transport development branch, Sydney Metro, consulted far and wide on its preferred plan to demolish a row of small shops and was inundated with thousands of signatures and letters demanding that the terraces be saved. The community put forth two preferred options: either integrate the station into the half billion dollar redevelopment of Star City Casino or put it in the car park directly behind Union Square, using prime vacant land with dual street frontage for maximum development return. Only a cynic would suggest that the two sites were rejected because it would be too complicated and costly to do a deal with Labor Party donors. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Star City Casino and its operators TAB Corp are amongst the largest contributors to the ALP. And the vacant car park that runs between Pyrmont and Harris Streets directly opposite the Casino’s entrance belongs to the Wakil family, who have donated generously to the ALP. Worth an estimated $75 million, the slumlords count 15 abandoned inner city properties in their property portfolio, including several terraces in Pyrmont, the dilapidated Terminus Hotel opposite the Point Hotel and the desolate lot near their Citilease corporate headquarters, whose ground floor is unsurprisingly unoccupied.
To be fair, the Casino has repeatedly stated it would welcome the station on its site, since their new car park is being built within just ten metres of the Metro tunnel. In assessing the suitability of the alternatives, Sydney Metro’s environmental assessment found both the Casino and the Wakil sites were slightly less convenient and somewhat more costly than simply gutting a row of local small shops and restuffing their façades with a train station inevitably attached to a new, homogenised chain store — stocked with mass made products supplied by a faceless global corporate chain.
Having half listened to the community’s concerns, the government put two options on exhibition: either they would demolish the entire row of terraces or they would retain the shop fronts and tack a train station onto the building’s bulldozed back, committing one of the cardinal sins of modern architecture: “facadism.” In diagnosing a similar outbreak in New York in the mid-80’s the pre-eminent architecture critic Paul Goldberger wrote, “To save only the facade of a building is not to save its essence; it is to turn the building into a stage set, into a cute toy intended to make a [redevelopment] more palatable. And the street becomes a kind of Disneyland of false fronts… To turn an older building of distinction into a fancy front door for a new [use] is to respect neither the integrity of the new or that of the old, but to render both buildings, in a sense, ridiculous.”
Having demolished half of Pyrmont at the turn of the century, the government intends to return with its wrecking ball to assault some of the last remaining terraces in the precinct. The irony is that the residents who have moved into the modern high-rise developments complete with harbour views now crave an old fashioned high street. In response the City of Sydney has spent millions upgrading Harris Street to create a village that will attract small shops, the very kind the State government proposes to demolish in the name of progress.
Lawrence Gibbons in the President of the Pyrmont Ultimo Chamber of Commerce and the publisher of the City Hub.
