Hatches X - April 2012

In the 3 months since the January edition a lot has changed on and around King Street; not a lot of it positive. Most of the dispatches over the last few months have been of much-loved local businesses - in their place more and more generic franchises have popped up. Following the migration of the many generic clothing shops from the also suffering Oxford Street, there's a risk we're losing what makes King St special. On the positive side this trend is mostly confined to King St north of the station and SoKi or South King Street is going from strength to strength.

Newtown Station April 2012

The Newtown Station renovations grind on towards their end 2012 finish, and we're starting to get an idea of what the finished product will look like. Here's my January update. Not much action on the AusGrid works lately, but there's been a container on Brown Street the last couple of months that is apparently going to support the introduction of Sydney Council Smartpoles between Wilson St and Missenden Road - more details on the council's website here.

New Openings
Not too much to get excited about this time round, most of the openings are the aforementioned chains:

• Mad Mex, MooCow, Gelatissimo have all opened up Newtown branches this year
• A new yoga venue, Yoga Union down on Union street - sorry I missed you last time :)
• Funky Mark V (or so it seems) opened up this weekend - fingers crossed that this incarnation will go the distance, it's a great venue and their support of live music deserves to be rewarded - hopefully that will continue. Update - now called Black Sheep
• A 'local supermarket' is replacing the furniture haven near Vanguard; apparently not a chain or known brand as had been rumoured. Looks like a couple of weeks away
• Young Henry's brewery opened up in the back streets near the flour mills

Going ...
Unfortunately most of the news is here this time:

• Quite spectacularly - Newtown Hotel collapsed last month (I mistakenly thought it was a fire) and remedial works are under way - Watkins Street still closed to cars.
• Many departures of much loved businesses: Books on King (cats and all), So Music (not Hum) a while ago now, Fish, Cinque - both due to the Dendy makeover, but no sign that they will return
• A Coffee and a Yarn have closed leaving cryptic messages about a potential rebirth
• Repressed Records will soon be vacating the beautiful St George's Hall
• The Asian supermarket Qmart near Burger Fuel disappeared without much notice; not sure if it was collateral damage from the short-lived Mr Cheng's up the road.
• Dendy Newtown closed for renovations - no re-opening date at this stage
• Gould's struggling according to their newsletter - but hanging in there. Drop down there and buy something, it's an institution we can't afford to lose. 
• The Ramen noodle bar in Berkelouw has been replaced by a mum and bub's style cafe; according to tipster and reviewer Detective Chow.

Development Applications

• Nothing much of interest. I had to laugh at the advertising for Newtown Village (next to Oporto) implying a nice quite lcoation with a leafy outlook rather than being squeezed between Enmore Road and the train line. Stand by for the noise complaints against Notes Live

Reviews

• There's a whole industry of food bloggers out there now, I've stored some Newtown specific links here for you to explore 
• Detective Chow continues to bring his unique take to food blogging to Newtown 
• Noted Newtown non-fan Terry Durack gave Spencer Guthrie a positive review in the SMH recently

Random 

• Short lived street art in the carpark next to Mitre 10 - already painted over sadly
• New online book review: Newtown Review of Books set up by locals Jean Bedford and Linda Funnell
• The 100 year old advertising uncovered by the burning down of the laundromat has now been painted over after being tagged. See more here.
  

You can see all the links that I have shared on Twitter via my bit.ly public timeline.

Newtown Station January 2012 Update

When plans were finally committed to for the Newtown Station renovations, I couldn't believe that it wouldn't be until the end of 2012 before the works were finished. I guess now it's January 2012 it's starting to become clear that we really won't have an accessible station until the end of this year.

There has however been some obvious progress, and you can see from the photo below that the new station will absolutely dwarf the existing buildings, and indeed the surroundings.

According to the summary posted on the construction site boundary, the lifts will be installed this month and next, and the internal works for the retail are ongoing. Indeed it seems like some progress is being made on the original station buildings; hopefully we won't have to wait until the end of 2012 for them to be ready.

From upstairs at the Townie you can see that the concrete base of the concourse has been laid over the graveyard of the old kebab shop, hopefully sealing in any toxic leakage that may have built up over the countless late nights it was operating.

Hatches IX - Jan 2012

Hello and Happy New Year ! It's been a while since the last update here; as always lots has been going on up and down and just off King Street - below is just a summary of a few of the changes that have occurred in the last 6 months; hopefully it won't be 6 months to the next update !

Well it's January 2012 and now we're starting to understand why it's going to take until the end of this year to complete the Newtown Station upgrade. The progress is summarised in the notice below, see the detailed post for more information and photos.

Newtown Station Progress

Also still ongoing is the long running Energy Australia works; although Ausgrid, as they are now known have promised to repair the King St footpaths once all the shops connect to the beautiful black boxes on the footpaths, there's no news yet whether the road destruction on Wilson St, Angel St etc will be repaired. There are contact details below from their website:

If you have any questions, please contact our project team on the 24/7 project information line 1800 643 608 or email info-kingstreet@ausgrid.com.au.

Wilson St EnergyAustralia Repairs

New Openings

• Quite a few small bars popping up in King Street finally, including Bench, Jester Seeds (Newtown vibe and Darlinghurst prices), and Kuki Tanuki in Erskineville, finally emerging from interminable renovations.
• Sydney's Mexican food trend has spread to Newtown, with the opening of Beach Bistro next to the Hub, replacing the short lived (and Mayor-loved) Soprano's pizzeria; and the slow but promised opening of Mad Mex 
• A swanky looking Basque inspired Kingfish Bistro as SoKi continues its fashionable evolution
• A Korean barbecue restaurant has bravely opened above Tamana's North Indian diner; graveyard for Tamana's Upstairs, Posh Spice and most recently Top Level Pizza

Going ...

Old Advertising on King St

• The Laundromat near King Street Cyclery burnt down spectacularly - revealing some great old advertising on the wall of the bike shop. Will be ever be nostalgic about today's advertising ? Hard to imagine !
• Sadly Wilson St Gallery closed without much warning - apparently moved to Danks St, to be replaced (inexplicably) by a ballet shop Repertoire - that I give 6 months.
• King St Cyclery itself has closed for renovations, moving to their repair centre near Marrickville Metro. Cheeky Monkey are still going strong
• Taste Chicken surprisingly disappeared, not sure if anyone knows the story behind that.
• The much loved Freaky Tiki in the Newtown Hotel closed - will it reappear after the renovations ?

Development Applications

• A chain milk bar (above) to replace the suddenly closed African restaurant Kilimanjaro. I hope the mural is protected. 
• Yet another gelato shop to replace the camera shop next door to African feeling. I guess they've seen how popular Gelatomassi is
• The owners of the post office have applied to add some apartments out the back - across the road from the much loved Varga Bar.

Reviews

• There's a whole industry of food bloggers out there now, hard to keep track of them all ! A special mention though to Detective Chow who has quite an original take on the reviews; and has visited two Newtown locations recently.
• New Vietnamese joint Rice Paper got a write up in the SMH Jan 21; coincidentally the same day the Mayor dined there. Recommended !
  

Random 

• Whispers of The Hub coming back to life - what will this be ?
• Some very cool guerrilla knitting outside the Neighbourhood centre
  

You can see all the links that I have shared on Twitter via my bit.ly public timeline.

Newtown Station Platform Demolition

Newtown residents were notified of the commencement of Phase 3 renovations with the note below this week, promising the demolition of the platform buildings and construction of the temporary shelters.

Sure enough, this afternoon (Feb 19th) the machinery was in and the 1924 platform building was being carted away

 

 Old platform roof gone

 Temporary platform buildings and shelter

Constructing new shelter

You can also see the supports for the new entrance (concrete pillars) going up in the background in the photo above.

Roofless Platform

Newtown Station 2011 Update

It's been a while since my last update on the Newtown Station renovations but over Christmas some more details were released accompanying the Development Application to Sydney Council. Before going into some more detail on what the final outcome will look like, some 'milestones' news.

Artists Impression

According to the Project Manager, Phase1 (archaeological and some demolition works) is complete. Phase 2 (ground work and piling associated with the construction of the new concourse and walkway) is nearing completion, and Phase 3 (main construction works) will be starting soon. The project is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2012.

The end of 2012 seems a long way away - apparently the main reason it will take so long is the need to keep the station running while doing the works, and the need for 'track possessions' - when the trains don't run - which are apparently limited to 4/year (although I could swear they are more frequent).

Apart form the artist's impression above, probably the best idea of the overall layout of the new station comes from the upgrade plan below. The new concourse is quite a long way down the platform, pretty much on top of the existing 1927 platform building, which is to be demolished. There will also be a new entry from Thomas Street, behind the Newtown Central shopping centre.
 

One thing I couldn't find, despite looking everywhere, was an impression of what the revised walkway roof would look like. The original design, or at least the artists impression of it, caused quite a bit of controversy when the original plans were announced, so I was curious to see what the announced more discrete canopy would look like. The closest I could find was in the sketch below, showing the view from the side of the station - I can only assume no impressions were generated to avoid controversy ! Let me know if you manage to find an impression anywhere.

Walkway canopy
In order to provide cover to the access walkway, a canopy is to be constructed
between King Street and the new concourse.  A 4 metre wide walkway canopy commences at King Street adjacent the existing booking office building and continues along the northern side of the walkway to the concourse building where it continues down to the new station concourse building, where it would terminate beneath the canopy of the concourse. Drawings of the design and the proposed form of the walkway are located in Appendix C

I did find the above about the canopy in the 'REF' - Review of Environmental Factors - but none of the diagrams in Appendix C sated my curiosity !

Concourse Level Side View

The DA also has a large set of detailed plans. Those interested in history should check out Appendix D1 - the Heritage Report. The remaining Appendix D volumes are mostly more modern photos, with the exception of Appendix D7 which contains an ammendment to the original HIS, updated after the original plans were modified, which is where I learnt that the stairs (1892 originals) will be retained as an emergency exit from the platform.

Building the platform in 1927

Appendix E - the archaeological report - contains even more history, unfortunately broken into 7 chunks, I guess to facilitate easy downloading for those still on Tony Abbott approved dial-up.

So it's a long wait, but I think the finished product will be worth it. Next step - find out what's happening to those Tram Sheds !

Newtown Station Latest

After a long period of silence, the revised Newtown Station renovations were launched this month by local member and Deputy Premier, Carmel Tebbutt and Transport Minister, Davd Campbell. The accompanying press release (pdf) was light on detail, although did contain an intruiging reference to 'including archaeological testing and demolition of the old kebab shop'. The renovations are supposed to cost an extraordinary $31M dollars, you really think we'd be getting more for that than a tarted up old station building, covered walkway and a couple of elevators.

Today

The main change from the previous proposal (read more here and here) is that the gaudy canopy (on the right below) :

has been replaced by a simpler cleaner look, which is an improvement. Interesting though that the revised plan was not provided to the public for comment, and indeed is not online anywhere. The Mayor's requests to Carmel Tebbutt's office for any further information have not been responded to.

Probably because this was about the 17th launch of station renovation plans (a NSW Labor specialty) there wasn't a lot of press, apart from this very brief article in the Inner West Courier. The comments on that article reflect the general cynicism that this will actually go ahead.

However a D.A. has already been lodged with the council, although intruigingly only for soil quality testing (those kebabs again) rather than any demolition or construction work. I've got to say it's the most detailed documentation I've ever seen, given the limited scope of the works. Maybe that's where some the $31M is going. According to the press release a tender has been called for the demolition of the kebabery as well; still, I'll only be assured this is real when I see signs of some construction rather than destruction.

Mystery Photo IV Revealed - Tram Shed Ramparts

Mystery Photo IV asked you to identify the jungle ramparts in the photo above. This didn't prove too difficult, and Steve of Bucknell very quickly identified it as the back of the tramsheds off Railway Lane. I'll save a potted history of the tram sheds, and the mayor's plans for them, for another post and instead just share a few more photos of the sheds as they are today.

There are some fantastic shots from inside the sheds on Newstown reader Ghee's flickr page; below I offer my more humble efforts - from the laneway:

from Erskineville:


and finally from the Thomas Street:

Newtown Station - Mayor's take

In my last post I summarised what I could find regarding RailCorp's plans to upgrade Newtown Station. So what do I think about the planned upgrade ?

In some ways the plan was a surprise for me, I had been expecting the concourse to push out behind the existing station building; assuming that the insides would be fully gutted to provide a smooth access to the lifts and stairs. The actual plan is more ambitious and has the advantage of also cleaning up the mess that is the property between the station and the Townie.


Other positive aspects of the plan include the renovation of the Tramway Depot Office (above) - as well as the existing buildings that were always going to be repaired, and of course the fact that the station gets two new stairs (should reduce the crowding that occurs after every train in peak hour) as well as a lift to improve access for many people who today struggle with the stairs. I'm pretty sure a single lift will be sufficient so I'm not worried about that.


One commenter has observed that the modern "wave" look of the new retail and concourse is out of character for Newtown. It's hard to tell from the limited 'artist's impression', and I'm not a fan of faux heritage; but it is important that the new retail be sympathetic to the surrounds, without necessarily aping them. Hopefully we will be provided more detailed plans and get a chance to really see how they fit in with the surrounding buildings. From first glance the wave roof may well be too domineering for the area. I'm not sure about covering the whole area between King Street and the concourse either - it's important part of the walk way is covered so that it's possible to get to the platform dry, without a massive structure blocking out all sunlight.

My biggest worry though is the impact these plans might have on the tram sheds and remaining open space in front of them next to the station. In the Mayor's ideal world, this open space would become a public square, the Tram Sheds converted to low cost artist/designer residence with on site markets (as well as cafes etc). It would be a shame if this station upgrade blocked off access to the remainder of the open space in front of the sheds, or indeed took up too much of the space that could otherwise become part of a Newtown Town Square.


It's very hard to get accurate information on what the state of play is with the tram sheds - my recollection from the April meeting was that they had been sold to a developer a while ago, it had all gone pear-shaped and it was now in court. Fingers crossed that the situation can be saved.


Anyone got any more information on the tram sheds ? In a future post I will give more ideas on what I'd like to see happen there, but I'd love to get the full picture of the current situation.

And what do you think ? I'd love to see some comments.

Newtown Station Plans Revealed

A few months ago, your mayor attended the community information session on the oft-delayed Newtown Station upgrade, where deputy premier and local member Carmel Tebut, representing both herself and the absent RailCorp and RTA, announced that the initial proposed plans for a lift from the existing station building to the platform had been abandoned for technical reasons, and RailCorp had gone back to the drawing board, with more ambitious (and expensive plans) due for release in 3-6 months for public comment.

Credit where credit is due, last month RailCorp did indeed come out with some details on the planned upgrade and timing. While there is a glossy brochure (available at the station) describing the upgrade (from where the above image comes), details are hard to come by online. The NSW government planning site offers just an unhelpful map, and local media coverage was limited to one article in the local rags. Finally however I managed to find the Development Application on the Heritage Branch website; where it appears we have until September 16th to comment, provided we get to Parramatta for the paper copies before then ! It rather brings to mind the beginning of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

So what do we get ? The application states:

Proposal: Construction of easy access facilities including installation of one lift to the platform, new centrally located overhead concourse, two stairs to the platform, new elevated covered access walkway from street entry to the concourse, new public toilets and family accessible toilet, new platform canopies, relocation of station ticketing facilities to refurbished two storey Tramways Depot Office, new and upgraded retail premises.

What this means is that the unused area between the station and the Townie will become the station entry, with a semi-covered walkway leading down to a point past the end of the Townie, where a concourse will be built over the platform, with two new sets of stairs dropping down onto the platform, as well as the much promised lift (just one).


The picture above may help (click on it for a larger version); the building behind the tree is the Tramways Depot Office, which is proposed to become the new booking office, and the walkway runs down past it before swooping over the platform to become the new concourse and access point.

The map below gives another viewpoint; from it, it appears a new station access will be created at Thomas Street, off Newman Street.


The existing station buildings will be refurbished; and the existing stairs will disappear. The area outside the current booking office becomes part of the concourse; and the wall between it and the new access is removed. The actual booking office becomes new retail; and the adjacent 'Thundabox' building is to be (finally) renovated. It seems though that the Mayor's suggestion of a direct slippery dip from Platform 8 at the Townie has unfortunately been ignored.

Below are a few more pictures to help understand the plans.

Thundabox in its present-day glory

Current Building

New Entrance -
the chimney will presumably disappear as the wall is opened up

Kebabery to be replaced with new retail