UrbanGrowth will now make recommendations to Government on how to
proceed with the planning of the corridor regeneration. A comprehensive
ongoing engagement program is expected to commence in 2014.
One workshop included government agencies, the two universities and
other major landholders around the site. A second workshop was made up
of randomly selected community members from the inner-Sydney area. The
third was made up of representatives from key community based
organisations and groups from the local area including most of the
surrounding residents groups.
The community meetings were day-long workshops facilitated by Wendy
Stamp from consultants KJA. Associate Professor Roberta Ryan from UTS
provided input on the area surrounding the corridor while UrbanGrowth’s
Project Director Tim Poole provided input on the Sydney planning
context. Michael Harrison from Architectus who undertook the background
study presented on the regeneration potential. The randomly selected
group also received a bus tour around the site.
The aim of the workshops was to understand the important objectives
and principles that should drive regeneration of the Central to Eveleigh
corridor. Questions explored included: the kind of place Central to
Eveleigh could be and what should guide planning for buildings,
transport and infrastructure, and what is most important about the
stakeholder engagement process.
The Architectus background study will be made available in the next
couple of weeks on the UrbanGrowth NSW website along with the workshop
inputs and reports from each of the workshops. This will allow the
community to see what came out of the workshops and to provide any
feedback to UrbanGrowth.
While the UrbanGrowth focus for these sessions was on the long term,
there is a short-term element too. On October 31 UrbanGrowth announced a
Registration of Interest process for the three undeveloped commercial
sites at the Australian Technology Park. While the ad specifies the size
of the sites, a media release issued on the same day by the Minister
states the NSW Government is “open to ideas that would expand the
current gross floor area footprint”. At the moment, heights on the
current car park sites would allow up to 11 storeys.
More details on Central to Eveleigh can be found on the REDWatch website.
Geoff Turnbull provided community input in the planning for the
three meetings and attended the three meetings, two as an observer and
one as REDWatch Spokesperson.
Source: South Sydney Herald December 2013