11/05/2010

This piece from the local newspaper mentions a council spokesman, but not by name. Hopefully the promises of this nameless beaurocrat is worth the electrons its printed in:

http://sxnews.gaynewsnetwork.com.au/news/visionless-inept-frustrating-006918.html

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Visionless, inept, frustrating’
WRITTEN BY BRENDAN BOLGER | 08 MARCH 2010

The City of Sydney Council has been sharply criticised for its lack of consultation with business owners along Oxford Street which has contributed to the demise of the “gay iconic strip”.

Local resident, “caretaker” vice-president of the Darlinghurst Business Partnership (DBP) and co-business owner of The Record Store Stephan Györy said Council has a “habit of planning for us and consulting at us”.

The DBP said it encouraged Council to purchase the vacant T2 premises on Taylor Square, which it congratulated for preventing it becoming another night time venue on the strip, but said it was now concerned that Council will “arbitrarily” decide what was needed at the site.

Council announced in January that its purchase of the “notorious” T2 nightclub would pave the way for “community-based options” including a bicycle shop and repair centre, a cafe, a tour company and a place for cycle groups to meet.

It said in a statement that a local survey from June 2008 found locals wanted less nightclubs, pubs and clubs but wanted more cafes, restaurants and local services.

Györy said however that Council’s creation of the Oxford Street Cultural Quarter under its Sustainable Sydney 2030 plan had placed “layers and layers of bureaucracy between [commercial interests] and the Council”.

He wrote to Council in February to “urge” they commence community consultations for input into “possible additional uses” at the site, but said he has since been ignored.

In his letter, Györy suggested Council changes the community consultation format from public forums and adapt to new technologies.

“For what would surely be far less than the combined financial and time costs of a physical process, you could very simply conduct an online poll,” he wrote, adding that “suggestions” could be included in the poll.

Györy told SX the DBP had also requested an independent facilitator if the consultations were to continue in a forum format, but were flatly refused.

“They just won’t have meetings they can’t control,” he said.

He added that since the multi-million dollar Oxford Street “upgrade”, Council has not once consulted with business owners about the effect the infrastructure changes have had on the entire environment.

DBP caretaker president Andrew Duckmanton said the DBP had originally mooted the cycling centre plan, but also suggested that community organisations have access to the top floor and that the post office be moved back into central Darlinghurst to revitalise the area.

“They are visionless, inept and frustrating,” he said and showed “a lack of support for the daytime economy”.

He said due to the lack of a clear vision for Lower Oxford Street, which he said Council claimed has an economic impact of $540 million per annum, it had left the commercial aspect of the area in an “unsure environment”.

“Even the gay identity is not really grounded,” he said.

“How can it work if the community does not support it, the community is there on the ground every day. We’ve become insular as a community. Somehow this has got to change,” Duckmanton said.

A Council spokesperson said the Oxford Street Cultural Quarter Action Plan was a response to locals who requested that Council build on the area’s strengths.

“Oxford Street and its vicinity have long been appreciated as a creative and cultural centre both locally and internationally … a rich cultural experience for residents and visitors,” she said.

Consultations will be continued with the community in 2010 to develop a deliverable action plan and will be informed by “interviews, workshops, formal consultations and research,” she said.

Meanwhile, Taylor Square could hold regular farmers’ markets comprising 44 stalls that would mainly sell organic produce and “artisan” food products but would also offer cooking demonstrations from local chefs and education resources for sustainable urban living.

Sydney City Council has received a proposal from Sydney Sustainable Markets Inc to commence running the markets each Saturday from 17 April between 8am-1pm for the next 12 months, excluding public holidays

16/03/2010

It is already doing this, as you can tell from the appearance of yet another convenience store next to the Colombian Hotel. How this 1500 people strong multimillion dollar entity (CoS) cannot see the link between our arguments and their alcohol and violence problem, is hard to comprehend. They have themselves acknowledged the problems by supporting the Liquor License freeze and 2am lockout.

One can only put it down to the fact that Clover will not go within 1000 yards of anything that smells of risk. Parks are nice and safe, so she keeps making them. (Note: I am not against parks and acknowledge the necessity of public domain upgrades)

On questioning them, council will insist that they are doing lots for Oxford Street. Let's see them hold a community meeting in the area and put that proposition to the local community.

But ho, they also insist they have meetings for the area, down in Surry Hills and up in Potts Point and when you tell them they are failing to communicate with this community, they insists they are not, failing to see the extreme irony in that proposition.

NB: There has not been a community meeting in the Lower Oxford Street area since the conclusion of the Gateway Project five years ago. When one council staff member was presented with this fact she blithely replied that she thought no one would come.

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Councillors & CEO

Firstly, a hearty thanks for your purchase of the T2 building at Taylor Square. It is good to know that you have begun to respond to our pleas for active management of the area.

To give a bit of context to this email, the suggestion to create a bicycle hub at Taylor Square, which originally came from Andrew Duckmanton of the DBP, was only one part of a broader strategy to “Reclaim the Square”, a concept CEO Monica Barone verbally signed off on at one of our meetings* with her late 2009.

I now write to urge you to consult with the community on possible additional uses for these premises.

A bike hub may attract some people over time, but things like a council one stop shop or post shop would attract a lot of people right away and it is vital for the long term rehabilitation of Taylor Square that it is of use to the largest possible cross-section of the community.

I don’t need to remind you that 2010 is possibly the only postcode in Sydney surrounded by post offices, but containing none. Odd for an area with ¾ billion dollar/year economy and that is home to 25,000 residents.

I would also like to suggest that community consultation does not need to follow the model you currently adhere too. For what would surely be far less than the combined financial and time costs of a physical process, you could very simply conduct an online poll, supported by a direct mail campaign to mop up the non-internet users. Short of that, you already have a very comprehensive email list of community (residents & business) stakeholders.

Just take a poll on the uses you, and we, currently have proposed, as well as providing an fields for additional suggestions.

I was going to wait to bring this up at the Lower Oxford Street and Surrounds [OXLO] community meeting that you are planning for the area, but have decided that the matter is too urgent to leave lying about.

Two other small matters:
1) It seems that in your renovation of 118 Oxford Street you have installed track lighting instead of low energy bulbs.
2) Seeing as how you actively discourage car use in this city, could you please provide e-waste recycling facilities at your one stop shops and also, instead of having a half-yearly stationary collection day in Pyrmont, perhaps you should consider a year round, roving one, like the breast screening bus, just park it in 52 different places a year, a week at a time.
Thank you for your time
Stephan Györy

08/02/2010

12/10/2009

Yet another piece, you would think that the various levels of government would be interested in getting together with the local community (residents & businesses) and tap their local knowledge for suggestions on how to solve this problem. But no, they are too busy off being ineffective and covering their asses.

Daily Telegraph Article

Excerpt: "LATE-night revellers have turned Oxford St into a dangerous chicken run, risking their lives and forcing cars to swerve and dodge.

Some people walk, some run - others just put their hand up to halt oncoming cars and hope for the best.

31/8/2009

excerpt: "I don’t think Oxford Street caters well to anyone,” says Damien Eames, head of Marketing at New Mardi Gras. “I rarely go there anymore… Sydney’s mix of planning controls and liquor licensing restrictions means there are very few high intensity night life districts. There are only so many venues that can be crammed into Kings Cross, Oxford Street and George Street. The market isn’t really that competitive and as a result venues can treat their customers as cattle."

http://www.samesame.com.au/features/4436/Has-Sydney-Fallen-Asleep.htm

24/8/2009

For those of you outside Sydney, bear in mind that this city generates 8% of GDP and gets rorted by the feds on GST as well. If we don’t get our PT system sorted out A.S.A.P. Sydney will continue to be a global laughing stock among other world cities: nothing but a pretty harbour and a cold bleak CBD."

16/7/2009

Council recently held their bi-yearly community meetings: June 30 for Surry Hills (at the new Library) and July 9 for Darlinghurst (at the Rex Centre Potts Point). Needless to say there was little to no discussion of Oxford Street as it is so far away from both these venues (bike lanes on Bourke Street and the 311 bus and were the hot ticket items - both issues local to the immediate surrounds).

2 years ago we pointed out that the LAPs (Local Action Plans) reinforced the concept of Oxford Street as boundary and therefore relegated it to the bureaucratic netherworld. We were assured the new LAP's (the Activity Hubs of Sustainable Sydney 2030) would address this issue.

They have not.

This is no surprise and one can only assume that the entire council is either completely incompetent or have some kind of directive to ignore Lower Oxford Street and let it rot.

One can only wonder.

23/6/2009

Comment from Michael:

Oxford started to die 20 years ago when increasing rents forced most people
to move away from Darlinghurst

The 2am lockout was the last nail in the coffin ... lets face it .. its now
a hassle to go out anywhere near Oxford St on weekends these days.. no
parking and no cabs at 2:30am! (and busses on weekends don't come often
enough)

people don't go out there by themselves any more (when that happens you know
its dead!)

I don't know if it can be saved now without some serious changes in
everything from licensing to transport to freedom to move between clubs.

19/6/2009

See here our submissions on the City of Sydney's DRAFT Corporate plan. As you can see, there are serious grounds for concern regarding the City's management far beyond the confines of Lower Oxford Street, as pointed out rather elegantly in the sydney morning herald article below.

18/6/2009

A excerpt from an article in the English Publication Monocle. As you can see, the problems we have outlined are just part of a far larger picture.

"Sydney, says Monocle, may be blessed by nature, have an enviable lifestyle and a thriving restaurant scene which shows Europe the meaning of service. But its cultural life is a bit patchy and it is cursed by an incompetent council that stymies all opportunities that sweep into the city.

Melbourne on the other hand nurtures its entrepreneurial brands, has a thriving literary and cultural life, values its distinct neighbourhoods and exudes self confidence. It is let down only by its sprawl and buckling train network that has staff handing icecreams out to par boiled passengers."

Please do not take this to mean we hate Sydney and Love Melbourne. We don’t buy into that rival city garbage. This is merely meant to serve as another ‘external’ example of our point. That this city is run by people who at best, have their eyes and ears firmly shut…

11/6/2009

Sydney is not a lovely place in winter. The CBD is a biting wind tunnel, Frank Sartor's granite footpaths are stained with the grease from spilled milkshakes, the sun is thin, the faces chapped and there's a pervading pong of rotten cooking oil and urine.

You've more chance of being crippled for life by a wild-eyed skateboarder than you have of finding a delicious and inexpensive meal after 2.30 in the afternoon. In fact, you can walk the entire length of the city from Central to Circular Quay on some thoroughfares and find nothing other than 1950-style cafes doing ham and cheese on toast.

Forget all the "Emerald City" nonsense, to borrow a line from someone I can't remember; Sydney makes Dallas look like Paris.

Here's another line, from the late great French cultural figure and politician, Andre Malraux. In Paris, he said, the city controls the developers. The developers do not control the city. Naturally he said it in French, so it sounded so much better.

Sydney's what you get when the developers run the place. Badly designed, cheaply finished buildings. You can count on the fingers of one, maybe one-and-a-half, hands buildings constructed in the CBD in the last 50 years where aesthetics were given at least an even break with the money. The big institutions, particularly the banks and Telstra, have given us some shockers.

Still, we're used to shockers: the Cahill Expressway and the monorail have helped deaden our response to whatever fresh hell is around the corner. My personal favourites are the overhead footways criss-crossing the city, like vast vacuum tubes sucking consumers from one shopping extravaganza to another. If ever there was a determined piece of civic uglification it is the overhead pedestrian tunnel - the brute force of commerce crushing charm.

The old Carlton brewery site on Broadway, if work ever recommences, will be massively overdeveloped - as will the Barangaroo project. Opportunity after opportunity is missed - Darling Harbour has the unmistakable aura of a tourist clip joint and that other great promise, Pyrmont, is filled with apartments designed for dwarfs.

Every time an area requiring sensitive management comes on the horizon a special planning committee filled with party hacks, mates, real estaters and "planners" gets to work to eviscerate the promise of something uplifting.

Of course, there's the dazzle of the harbour and one or two incredible structures. You can get the odd good Thai dinner in the suburbs and there's the odd terrific new development (witness the new community centre in Crown Street, Surry Hills).

But what's happened to the soul of Sydney? The fact that the place is crawling with merchant bankers doesn't do much for a soul, but the real drag on the spirit has to be sheeted home to the politicians, who at best are ordinary and at worse dubious.

And that's what the city has become - ordinary and dubious.

There's no leader whoever spruiks the spirited talk of the greatness of city life and urban design. You have to go back 30 or more years to the days of the Department of Urban and Regional Development and Tom Uren to recall any government that had a passing thought about urbanity.

It was never on Howard's radar; however, the Ruddites have just established something called the Major Cities Unit, which exists in the Office of the Infrastructure Co-ordinator, the outfit charged with "prioritising billions of dollars in infrastructure investment".

But, when you look at the visionless political oiks of NSW, night after night on the box, you just know we haven't got a hope. It makes you want to see again that little jumping jack Leo Port, the former lord mayor of Sydney, who at least had some energy and always seemed to be rolling out plans and poring over models for improvements and beautification.

Today there's political paralysis. A few years ago the Government had an opportunity to tear down the Cahill Expressway, but was frozen by the thought that there'd be a backlash from the whingers in the bush if a red cent was spent doing something half-decent for Sydney.

Still, the great beer-barn developments in places such as Kings Cross get waved through the development machine, including the Land and Environment Court, while the small bars are stymied in red tape. Try and get a civilised drink out of sight of a poker machine, just keep trying.

John O'Neill, the chairman of Events NSW, had a piece on these pages on Monday. My pulse quickened as he wrote that the Business Council and a whole pile of other worthies think it's about time something was done about the city and the state. "Something radical, a bit out of left field," he teased. This exciting bit of boldness turned out to be "Brand Sydney", yet another marketing exercise, or putting lipstick on the pig. Apparently "Vivid Sydney", a winter wonderland cultural event, is part of the brand. All I noticed was that the Opera House was lit up.

Yet, Sydney always manages to trick its way into getting listed as an incredibly desirable place to live. It's equal eighth on The Economist's latest "liveability ranking". Last year in something called the annual Anholt City Brands Index it came first. Don't believe it.

On second thoughts that's a measure of branding. O'Neill's people are doing well. Shame about our heart and soul.

justinian@lawpress.com.

15/4/2009

Clover, we implore you to recognise the value of the Inner East and be our champion. Help us access state and federal funds. Take charge of Oxford Street! Help us promote the Inner east, with its huge economy, to the rest of the State, Country and World. Help us show that Sydney is more than just a bridge and a harbour.

Stop the meetings. Show the consultants the door, and take some action! PLEASE!

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This rant was inspired by the following article:

http://sydney-central.whereilive.com.au/news/story/newtown-station-urban-blight-lord-mayor/

Newtown station is an urban blight with vacant shopfronts and big problems with disability access, Lord Mayor Clover Moore has said.
In a rant against the station, in the heart of Newtown, Cr Moore said Town Hall would work with the State Government to try and improve the state of the busy transport hub.
Cr Moore has asked City of Sydney CEO Monica Barone to convene a working group of representatives from the council and State Government to work on the problem.
She said a recent meeting with State representatives had identified Newtown as an important hub.
``There is a problem with vacant shopfronts,’’ Cr Moore said.
``Newtown station is an urban and visual blight. Undoubtedly there are [also] disability access issues around the station'

19/2/2009

After having brought this up with numerous council people on numerous occasions over the course of two years, it was only after this email bomb that the bollards were quietly removed. We post here the Lord Mayor’s response to out initial letter and our reply to it, sent today.

The exchange speaks for itself.

30/1/2009

On the 15th of December 2008 we sent an email to Councillor John McInerney asking whether Clover’s Independent team would consider championing the ‘remaking’ of Oxford Street in the way that they were Albion and Crown. We have, as of this date, not received a reply.

13/12/2008

The City of Sydney Planning Development and Transport Committee meeting on Monday the 8th Dec 2008 and unanimously supported Independent Councillor John McInerney's amendment to pursue returning Foveaux and Albion Streets to two-way traffic. The Reason given was that the current one-way arrangement creates freeway conditions that encourage speed, undermine pedestrian safety and divide the Surry Hills village.

We strongly support this kind of thinking and encourage City of Sydney council to consider Oxford Street ion their dealings with the RTA.

4/12/2008

Well done, I look forward to watching the progress of the campaign to save Oxford St.

16/11/2008

Really good work from the DBP. I hope the people in council take the time to read it and re-invigorate the strip.