The radical plan to give Sydney four new arts venues and transform the city’s east

Four new performance halls – including a 2500-seat theatre – would be built in place of the Domain car park under a radical and until-now secret proposal to give Sydney a world-class performing arts precinct and transform the city’s east.

The grand vision represents the biggest cultural reimagining of Sydney since the Opera House opened 50 years ago, and would also involve wholesale renewal of Woolloomooloo and surrounds with a 24/7 hospitality precinct, commercial office towers and social and affordable housing.

Pitched by Grimshaw Architects, the proposal has been seen by several of Sydney’s key arts bosses, the City of Sydney council, Committee for Sydney think tank and the Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain Trust. If realised, it would likely require decades to plan and deliver.

While the exact configuration of the cultural precinct could change, it would likely contain a lyric theatre for major musicals, an Indigenous cultural centre and a rehearsal space – all of which were identified as key needs for Sydney in Infrastructure NSW’s 2016 Cultural Infrastructure Strategy.

The halls would be cut into the Domain along Sir John Young Crescent, largely on the site occupied by the Domain car park.

Grimshaw managing partner Andrew Cortese said clustering the venues would give Sydney the arts precinct it sorely needed while driving renewal of surrounding areas, including the much-maligned William Street and the ageing social housing around Woolloomooloo.

The site on Sir John Young Crescent is currently occupied by the Domain car park.Credit: Louie Douvis

“Unashamedly, we should be the cultural capital of Australia,” Cortese said. “Our neighbours to the north – Singapore, Kowloon, Shenzhen – they are all investing in cultural infrastructure. Melbourne has been investing in it. This is where we’ve got the opportunity to do it right.”

A Grimshaw briefing paper seen by the Herald said Sydney was “far behind” in the provision of new cultural facilities and “lacks an understanding of how to animate public life through the integration of culture, commerce, community and civic places”.

The vision imagines connecting the forthcoming western metro line – which terminates at Hunter Street – with a future south-east metro line, and a new station near Riley and Stanley streets below a 24/7 entertainment and hospitality precinct.

A revamped William Street, with high-rise offices and shops loosely modelled on Singapore’s Orchard Road, would turn it into “a remarkable boulevard, rather than the trashy artery it is now”, Cortese said. Rezoning the surrounding area for a significant uplift in development would also help pay for the project, which he estimated to cost $2 billion.

Grimshaw has quietly circulated the proposal among developers and the city’s leading cultural institutions for years. Sydney Opera House chief executive Louise Herron told the Herald it was a “beautiful idea” and “fabulous concept”, although she said the design of the performance halls should be put out to a public design competition.

“It’s a really good use of the space, and when you look at really great cities, they manage to have joined enlivened spaces. We still have quite a few dead patches,” she said. Herron was sceptical of whether Sydney needed another concert hall, saying flexibility was key.

“There’s no doubt the current demand is for excellent, unmissable work. That’s what people are coming to,” she said. “You can’t pick the genre, but you can pick excellence. We need spaces where people can gather, and spaces with appropriate equipment.”

Committee for Sydney chief executive Gabriel Metcalf – also briefed on the proposal – said it was an exciting vision for east Sydney, although it would be vital to work through the details with the city’s existing cultural institutions.

“The Domain is part of the spiritual core of Sydney, so you have to always be really careful when you’re working in and around the Domain,” he said. “But previous generations of Sydneysiders already made the grave error of putting the motorway right through the middle of it ... there are some mistakes from the past that need healing.”

Sydney has long grappled with its need for a new theatre and absence of a theatre district, and last year the Herald revealed the state government was scouting old picture palaces for potential sites.

Grimshaw is portraying its concept as the better option because it would centralise the venues and start much-needed renewal of east Sydney and Woolloomooloo. “We can’t have an under-utilised part of our city within a 500-metre distance of the centre for the CBD,” Cortese said.

The architect’s briefing paper says Woolloomooloo is experiencing the “early stages of incoherent gentrification”. Under the proposed vision, old public housing would be upgraded and new stock added, while new open public spaces would include a raised walkway and cycleway above the existing heavy rail line that slices through the precinct.

Cortese said William Street was ideally positioned to serve as the epicentre of a renewed 24-hour district, which would never return to Kings Cross. “It’s a fundamental transformation of how the city works.”

The proposal has no government endorsement at this stage. “It is just us advocating for an idea ... but the debate about it must begin now,” Cortese said.

Grimshaw, a London-based architectural studio with a Sydney office that opened in 2015, has designed projects such as Melbourne’s Southern Cross Station, Sydney’s light rail stops and the forthcoming Martin Place metro station.

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