Garden Island: Visionary plans will transform Sydney Harbour
THIS could be the bold new look of Sydney Harbour if plans to open up Garden Island come to fruition. The revamp is the brainchild of an award-winning Sydney-based architect and would help deliver a $15 billion boost to the economy.
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THIS could be the stunning new look of Sydney Harbour if plans to open up Garden Island come to fruition.
The revamp is the brainchild of an award-winning Sydney-based architect and would help deliver a $15 billion boost to the economy.
The visionary idea has three distinct stages, beginning with a new cruise terminal added to the current naval use, before striking apartment blocks and other world-class amenities are added to the prime waterside precinct.
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The first stage will create a permanent terminal for the booming cruise industry and stop the big operators from moving their ships to ports interstate or in Asia.
“Clearly the big growth in cruise liners using Sydney Harbour will need to be accommodated with a new terminal east of the Harbour Bridge,” Urban Taskforce chief executive Chris Johnson said.
The dazzling proposal comes just days after former Liberal leader and Navy Reserve captain Peter Collins submitted his hotly anticipated report on the future of the Navy to the government. The Collins report is understood to call for greater cruise ship access to Garden Island.
Inspired by the opportunity, former NSW government architect Johnson commissioned a team to imagine what could happen if a new cruise terminal opened the way for people to gain access to the last tract of Sydney Harbour foreshore remaining in Defence Force hands. Modelling by financiers KWC Capital puts the value of the revamp at $15 billion.
“The second stage, could see some Navy components relocated to Botany Bay and more apartments and hotel development designed as buildings covered in gardens,” Mr Johnson said.
“A final third stage, some decades off, would assume the Navy has relocated … and Garden Island becomes an exciting new garden precinct surrounded by Sydney Harbour.”
It is a critical issue for the cruise industry, which pumps $3 billion a year into the NSW economy, because the Navy currently only allows three ships a season to dock at Garden Island. “Garden Island is a wonderful opportunity for Sydney to develop a new precinct by the harbour for residential, sport, leisure, tourism and cultural purposes,” architect Chris Bosse said.
Mr Bosse, whose firm LAVA won last year’s European Architecture Prize, said they had come up with a 30-year staged plan that would see the gradual relocation of the Navy.
“It is an opportunity to relocate the Navy and create a new city precinct on the waterfront, something like the Tate Modern in London,” he said.
“The idea is that we return Garden Island to garden with green technology and naturally cooling buildings.”
The plan also incorporates a vision from Australia’s first government architect Francis Greenway, who wanted a pyramid built on the end of the island as a Sydney landmark.
Greenway, whose foresight has seen him added to the Bradfield honour roll, wrote to The Australian newspaper in 1825 suggesting a pyramid surrounded by gardens similar to the Domain.
“The whole front of the island toward the harbour could have been contrived so as to have formed part of the base of the pyramid with steps leading up to it in various directions,” he wrote.