As Sydney’s Leichhardt Mayor Jamie Parker this week met with the community over the fate of local Callan Park, stakeholders have come forward over the real issues with the proposed University of Sydney plan for the site.
When the NSW State Government handed the 60-hectare Callan Park site to Leichhardt Council, thereby quashing University of Sydney plans to use it, the council promised community consultation over the future of the site.
This week, Parker bolstered discussion over options for the park in a Town Hall meeting involving stakeholders and locals. More than anything else, though, the group was resolute over the University of Sydney proposal for a sprawling extension of its campus through the park.
Much more than it being a simple “land grab”, as it was touted by some opponents, the University of Sydney proposal for Callan Park involved a “pedantic” and “spurious” definition of what constituted open space from an architectural point of view, Rod Simpson, whose architectural firm Simpson Wilson Architects reviewed the university’s proposal, told Architecture & Design.
University of Sydney had used the United States’ Princeton University as a blueprint for its own proposal, tailoring a low density campus that runs down to the water’s edge. But Simpson, for one, questioned the usefulness of Princeton as a reference, noting that the American university is on flat ground, two centuries old, and has an $18.5 billion US endowment to help maintain it.
As a member of the Sydney City Farm group, which is proposing a portion of Callan Park be turned into place where vegetables are grown, chickens feed and lay and where students can learn about recycling, Simpson’s firm put forward an alterative solution to the university which was high density and involved using less floor space. But the university rejected it, he said.
“No one listened. There was no exploration of these alternatives whatsoever. That’s why it’s fallen on its face. To be blunt they were really stupid. Really, really, stupid,” Simpson said.
He said the university insisted on courtyards that sit between university buildings and so won’t feel public and which locals will not be inclined to use.
“These questions were never answered. There was no exploration of alternatives.” The university proposal was essentially “a new suburb going on the site”, Leichhardt Mayor Jamie Parker told Architecture & Design.
“At least 5,000 students, 700 people living on the site, hundreds of car parking spaces; it was really an over-development of the site done with no consultation,” Parker said.
The Leichhardt Mayor now welcomes the university to be involved in negotiations over the future of the site. “But,” he said, “the former [university] chancellor made it very clear that it was that proposal or no proposal.” University of Sydney was not available for comment on press.
