Sydney reaches for the clouds

Press, 15 July 1987, Page 21

Sydney reaches for the clouds

By

GEOFF MEIN

Christchurch and Timaru are not the only cities in this part of the world facing the prospect of radically transformed skylines.

Not to be outdone by a competitor’s plans to build an 88storey office tower in central Sydney, a team of property developers have now proposed a 115-storey tower block for that city’s historic Rocks area. If built, the taller of the two

Sydney buildings — code-named C.8.D.-l — will become the highest office block in the world,

topping even the UO-storey Sears tower in Chicago. C.8.D.-1 will be nearly three times as high as the towers proposed for Victoria Square in Christchurch and Caroline Bay in Timaru. When news of the C.8.D.-l proposal was leaked to Australian newspapers late last month, the “Sydney Morning Herald” reported that the New South Wales State Government wanted the building to be even higher. The newspaper said the $1.2 billion landmark tower would help make Sydney one of the world’s main financial centres.

The developers, who have adapted the design of oil platforms, claim to have the technology to build a tower of 145 storeys. Instead of using a conventional concrete core, they plan to use a steel skeleton with four giant external struts. If the Government approves final plans for the tower, a staff of 11,000 could be working in the completed building by 1992. C.8.D.-l and the Bond Corporation’s 88-storey Sky Tower — proposed for a site near Sydney’s Town Hall — are just two of a number of multi-million-dollar developments set to change the face of Australia’s premier city. Fifty hectares of derelict railway yards at Darling Harbour have become the focus of what the State Minister for Public Works, Laurie Brereton, describes as the greatest urban redevelopment in Australia’s history. Workmen are turning what used to be known as “Sydney’s sink” into a sparkling new leisure park. A feature of the project will be a seven-storey, curve-shaped convention centre with seating for 3500 in the main amphitheatre. (The Christchurch Town Hall auditorium can seat an audience of 2300.)

The largest kitchen in Australia is being installed in a building linking the convention centre to a huge exhibition complex with covered floor space the size of five football fields. One part of the complex is designed to convert into a banqueting room for 3500 people, or a buffet hall for 5000.

A maritime museum has been designed as a showcase for celebrating two centuries of Australia’s maritime history. Vintage naval and merchant vessels will be moored at wharves reaching out from the main building into the harbour. The waterside theme will be taken a step further with Darling Harbour’s aquarium, the outside of which is desined to look like a large breaking wave. Three giant tanks, to be stocked with tropical fish and corals, will be submerged in the harbour. A futuristic “discovery village” will include a spaceship that simulates the effects of weightlessness and a spherical “space theatre,” complete with 360-de-gree screen and laser projection to put the audience in the centre of the scene being shown. Darling Harbour’s powerhouse museum will be the largest of its type in the Southern Hemisphere. Sydney’s rejuvenated sink will also include a 12,000seat entertainment centre, an

international casino that never closes, and a harbourside marketplace featuring more than 200 shops and restaurants. History and the environment are not being entirely left behind in the developers’ rush “to confirm Sydney as one of the great cities in the world.”

The historic Pyrmont bridge, which once opened to let nineteenth century coal-burning freighters into Darling Harbour, is being restored.

Hundreds of trees and shrubs will be planted under the freeways, including massed groves of the first native eucalypts to be established in the central city for more than 100 years. A Chinese garden, designed by landscape architects from Guangdong Province — New South Wales’ sister state in China — will feature a two-storey pavilion and a system of interconnected lakes and waterfalls. Most of the facilities are scheduled to open in time for Australia’s bicentennial celebrations early next year. Civic leaders not so long ago hoped Darling Harbour would go away if they ignored it. They are now hailing the site as “the asset Sydney never knew about.” Like most waterside cities which were prosperous during the last century, Sydney lost its amenities to wharves,

warehouses and shipping. Changes in cargo-handling techniques and the establishment of container terminals have offered the chance for a fresh approach. The Darling Harbour project is trying to restore to Sydney the seafront quality it lost in the nineteenth century. The redevelopment, which started on a tight timetable in 1985, has not been all plain sailing. In April, Laurie Brereton was boasting about a “deluge” of private investment in the project. But last month, the State Premier, Barry Unsworth, likened Sydney businessmen to “stunned mullet” for failing to support the key conference and exhibition centres.

Opposition politicians have made a big deal about the escalating costs of the project. In May, 1984, the Premier announced the cost to the state Government would be $240 million. In September, 1985, he put the cost at $550 million. By May this year, it had topped $630 million.

Industrial stoppages have also threatened to wreak havoc with timetables. The "Sydney Morning Herald,” which in a May editorial called the project “hasty and controversial,” reported that strikes and stopwork meetings had already cost the site an average of one working day a week. One 24-hour strike was called because of a reported sighting of mice. Opponents of developments such as C.8.D.-l and Darling Harbour are worried about their effects on the already overburdened Sydney transport system. A construction boom in the central business district and roadworks on 11 of the city’s main roads have turned the streets into a traffic nightmare.

Drivers’ frustrations are eased little by obscure reassurances from officials, such as the state’s traffic authority director, Harry Camkin, who said: “You can’t have an omelette without breaking a few eggs.” Bulldozer Brereton, as some of his critics call the Minister of Public Works, is undeterred. He has thrown his not inconsiderble clout behind a $5O million monorail system — due to be completed early next year — and a plan for a $5OO million road tunnel to be sunk under Sydney Harbour. Glossy brochures point out that “the swift, whisper-quiet monorail will glide over the centrecity traffic snarls and red light jams on its single steel track set just about the awning levels of the main-street shops.” The four-lane Sydney Harbour road tunnel was approved by the state Government in May, and is due to open in 1992. It is hailed by its developers as “an engin-

eering wonder which will solve the traffic problems of the harbour crossing.”

Each of the tunnel sections, weighing 27,000 tonnes, will be partly buoyant, and will sink to the bottom of the harbour “like a feather.” The tunnel will be twice as long as the Ikm harbour bridge, and each section will be sunk in 70 metres of clay and mud on the harbour floor.

Traffic engineers say the tunnel will not solve traffic conges-

tion. It will simply increase the number of cars crossing into the central business district by about 15,000 a day. Environmentalists are unhappy that the popular Bradfield Park reserve will be a construction site for five years, and that Sydney will lose important parts of the botanic gardens. Not everyone is complaining. Real estate speculators have made a killing. Properties in Sussex Street, close to Darling Harbour, have trebled in value in the past year.

Nor are Australian businessmen the only ones cashing in. One Sydney real estate agent has reportedly negotiated more than $lOO million in sales to New Zealand investors since April.