Architect Harry Seidler’s family fight to protect former Yeshiva College, Bondi site owned by Harry Triguboff
A showdown between some of the Sydney Jewish community’s most powerful players is in motion as concerns mount that billionaire property developer Harry Triguboff is planning to develop the former Jewish Yeshiva College site.
Wentworth Courier
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A disgraced Jewish school closed by the state’s education watchdog. An esteemed Australian architect. A billionaire property developer with an extensive portfolio across the eastern suburbs.
A showdown between some of the Sydney Jewish community’s most powerful players is in motion to stop billionaire property developer Harry Triguboff from developing a Bondi site containing buildings designed by celebrated architect Harry Seidler.
The Seidler family, who manage the late architect’s estate, has urged council to place an interim heritage order on 34-36 Flood St; a site which comprises the former Yeshiva College, a Hasidic Jewish synagogue and a learning centre.
It also hosts Our Big Kitchen, a Jewish-run organisation which distributes meals to vulnerable people across Sydney.
Mr Triguboff bought two properties from Yeshiva College – an ultra-orthodox Jewish college at Bondi – for $6 million in 2012 when the school was in financial crisis.
The school was closed late last year after the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal backed a recommendation from NSW Education Standards Authority to cancel the registration of Yeshiva College after it was found the school had not complied with education standards.
Now Karimbla Properties, an arm of Triguboff’s Meriton property group, has asked council to rezone the site to medium density residential; a move the Seidler family, architecture groups, and the Jewish community fear will lead to the destruction of several historic buildings.
Specifically, the site contains the Sydney Talmudical College building which advocates have argued retains signature design elements of Mr Seidler.
The Seidler-designed synagogue was opened in 1961 by Australia’s one-time Foreign Minister Dr Herbert Evatt who, as president of the United Nations Assembly in 1946-47, drove a critical vote that recognised the state of Israel.
The site was the home of Yeshiva College until the 1980s before it expanded and moved next door, with the original synagogue attached to the school.
The council initially refused the rezoning request for the 1,327sq m site in July, however the state government’s Department of Planning and Environment (DPE) gave provisional approval in August.
By December, members of the Seidler family contacted Waverley Council requesting an interim heritage order to protect the site.
“The family fears any rezoning would place the Harry Seidler-designed synagogue, opened in 1961, at risk of demolition,” council papers state.
The council’s planning and development committee has recommended the council support an interim heritage order and assess the site’s heritage significance.
Documents show council officers have made two previous attempts to list the building on Waverley’s Local Environment Plan as a heritage item “but have been discouraged on both occasions by the building’s previous owners and pending security alterations to the building”.
Mr Triguboff said his the planning proposal had been supported by the NSW Planning Department and the rezoning had received only 10 objections “from over 10,000 Jewish people in Bondi”.
He said he did not support the heritage claims.
“Mr Seidler was a very good architect but that doesn’t mean every one of his buildings must be listed to the detriment of the private owner,” Mr Triguboff said.
He said the current zoning over the synagogue and a house on Anglesea St was incorrect as it only allowed major public infrastructure like sewerage pumping stations and cemeteries.
“The correct residential zoning will validate the existing uses and allow other improvements like child minding centres which would help the current uses be preserved,” he said.
The Royal Australian Institute of Architects (RAIA) has also recognised the synagogue’s architectural importance by placing it on the Register of Significant 20th Century Buildings.
RAIA Heritage Committee chair and NSW Chapter president Dr Jennifer Preston said the organisation had lodged its opposition to the rezoning of the college.
“Mr Seidler was Australia’s most prominent modernist architect, and was awarded the Royal Gold Medal for Architecture and the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal,” she said.
She said no heritage assessment was ever conducted on the site, either by council or the NSW Government.
“We believe (a heritage assessment) should be done,” Dr Preston said.
Waverley Council’s planning and development committee will vote on the matter at Tuesday night’s meeting.
Former chief executive of Yeshiva College and current director of Our Big Kitchen Rabbi Dovid Slavin was approached for comment.
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