Dependent on the success of this project is the revitalisation
of the Court House as a Community Health Centre. Thus we see the loss of three
facilities – hospital, court, and police station – to facilitate the movement
of the health centre from the Rachel Foster site, thus making way for the
commercial redevelopment of the hospital site.
Without the development of one we can’t have the creation of
the other.
The following facilities have now been lost to area
residents – the Public School, Rachel
Foster Hospital,
the Missionhome aged care facility, the courthouse, and the Old Police Station
with its overnight holding cells. They are to be reinvented as an Indigenous
sporting complex, private apartments and the relocated Health Centre. All these
properties now stand empty waiting for eventual redevelopment. There is nothing
new here for local residents, however with the loss of Rachel Fosters
Hydrotherapy unit leaving older residents to find places out of the area. The
practice of public redevelopment by private investment is now to be extended to
the Redfern Railway Station upgrade. Unlike other railway stations which have
been redeveloped by Railcorp and the Transit Authority, Redfern Station must be
paid for by other developments in the area. The selling of one piece of land to
pay for the development of another is the plan of the Redfern Waterloo Authority
(RWA) for the area. These plans are expressed in the Built Environment Plan
which calls for the privatisation of urban revitalisation.
As with the redevelopment scheme that has been established
by the Department of Housing to develop the Elizabeth St
block opposite Redfern
Park, so will more
redevelopment involve these type of arrangements? We can expect to see old
style walkups make way for more of these redevelopments in the near future as the
RWA makes its final recommendations for changing the face of Redfern and Waterloo. No other suburb
has its own Minister or a development authority to oversee its redevelopment
and one must wonder why Redfern/Waterloo has to be the guinea pig for such an
experiment.
Residents must wonder what gains they will get from all this
as we are made to pay again and again for what should be government supported
services.
Source: REDWATER NEWS – The Redfern and Waterloo Neighbourhood
Advisory Boards Newsletter – December
2007 (PDF 856 KB)