Wentworthville couple says no to developers eyeing Veron St
Wentworthville’s Kakica and Ivan Adin make a tenacious pair. They have been holding developers at bay for several years and they won’t budge.
Don’t mess with Wentworthville’s Kakica and Ivan Adin.
Countless times the Veron St stalwarts have shunned cashed-up developers’ enticing offers to buy their vast 1000sq m block and replace it with townhouses or units.
They’re not even tempted.
“That house is for living, that house is not for demolishing,’’ Mr Adin, 84, said.
“It’s a double brick — everything inside, there’s floors and doors, I did by my hand.
“I built that from start to finish, my life’s here.”
Mrs Adin, 78, is used to developers ready to negotiate and offer more money.
“I think they are very money hungry,’’ she said.
“I think we are too old to start again.”
The Hungarian migrants have called their three-bedroom, two-bathroom, double-brick house home since 1984 when they moved with their daughter, now 60 and living at Northmead, from the confines of a pint-sized St Peters property when Mr Adin job as a shoekeeper with Northcott Disability Services relocated to Parramatta.
Mrs Adin continued the commute to work on the production line at an inner city cassette factory until her retirement in 1998.
The $45,000 pink timber house made way for the double brick house with a well-manicured front lawn and an organised veggie patch out the back.
“We like to live here,’’ Mrs Adin said.
“There’s the station, the hospital. We are close to everything.
“When we moved in, there were very nice people our age and they looked after everything but everything’s terrible now.
“They are good people, they just don’t want to connect.”
The couple has tolerated developers’ greed and witnessed their neighbourhood transform from single-level dwellings to a forest of units, most which have sprouted in the past three years.
Train commuters shuttling between Wentworthville and Westmead just need to take a quick glance to see the rapid change.
Apartment blocks up to four storeys dominate one side of Veron St where they dwarf seven homes and bungalows with wraparound verandas.
Between January 1, 2012 and December 31, 2018, Cumberland Council approved 12 development applications on Veron St and 44 development applications for townhouses and apartments in Wentworthville.
The council said there were three development applications for units under consideration at Wentworthville, with no applications at Veron St.
Development on the Adins’ side of the street is inevitable but developers will have to wait longer to do a deal with them.s
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