What will the UTAS $600m relocation from Sandy Bay mean for central Hobart?
What will the University of Tasmania’s $600 million relocation from Sandy Bay mean for central Hobart, asks Amanda Ducker.
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AMONG its many mind-expanding offerings, the University of Tasmania runs a four-year Bachelor of Psychology with Honours course, but you don’t need a psychology degree to know it’s a bad idea to overpromise and under-deliver. As Vice-Chancellor Rufus Black sets out to win hearts and minds over to the university’s decision to shift its main campus from Sandy Bay to the city over the next decade, he knows he has his work cut out for him. He also has a strong case to make and about four degrees to help him articulate a soaring, public-spirited vision for both the future of the city and the institution he leads.
Over the past year the university has been weighing up the merits of redesigning and rebuilding the Sandy Bay campus, where a cluster of post-World War II buildings nears the end of its useful academic life, against a city-centric model that would develop along a spine from the Domain and along Melville St. Though the move will cost at least $600 million, Black says it would cost more to stay put.
After the University Council announced its decision last month, critics fired up. Rumours swirled about “what was really going on” and spread in the absence of solid detail. Last night, at the black-tie 2019 University Dinner and an interview with TasWeekend before it, Black expanded on both the high-minded ideals and blunt financials underpinning the vision.
As he leads the university to self-identify more strongly as a place-based university in which much that happens in learning is site-inspired, Black says he encourages an ongoing contest of ideas rather than unhelpfully divisive binary positions.
History tells us that if we are to move forward, it would be best to avoid being forced to choose between “differing worthy stories and values”, Black told his audience in a polite allusion to Tasmania’s history for just those kind of divides.
When we speak, Black emphasises the need to give Brexit-style thinking a wide berth. “It’s not a simple stay or go,” he says. “That [approach] doesn’t do justice to the complexity of a project of this nature.”
As well, the Sandy Bay and city models were all too easy framed as competing notions about the idea of a university itself, rather than a careful weighing up of desirable evolution. He believes a city campus that honours inquiry and expression as ends in itself is also well-placed to forge partnerships with many parts of the community. That, he says, is the way of the future.
“The campus of today needs to create not just community among its staff and students but to be integral to the communities with which it partners. Our vision is to be a university that services its community and state, and we do that best as close to the heart as possible, close to community and government in much the same way as we have the medical school [Menzies Institute] next to the hospital already.”
The ability to unite different functions is what the institutions of great cities do, he says. “We can be the new public square for the evidence-based conversation, the new Cathedral for contemplation and the new concert hall for creativity.
“By its nature this process will be challenging. We need to build a campus that the people of Hobart and our university will love, just as staff an alumni love Sandy bay now, and the way older alumni and staff loved their experience on the Domain [the university’s original home].”
Just chipping away at the status quo will never create the city people want, he says: a people-focused city with better walkways, cycle routes, public transport and ferries. Boldness is the order of the day.
And let’s remember, he says, that we already have 4000 students in the city already, versus 10,000 still studying from Sandy Bay, says Black. Far from breaking up the university, he sees the move as unifying. “In future we will have virtually all staff and students within 750m of each other,” he says. “That ability to connect is really critical. We think the combination of the old sandstone and the green precinct of The Doman and the architectural distinctiveness of the new building will be be a campus that sets us above and sets us apart.”
It would also allow the university reduce duplication of facilities, notably in science faculties and in student services. Furthermore, it enabled a hitherto unthinkable sharing of university spaces and facilities to the public.
Persuasive, isn’t he? But there are flies in the ointment as Black sets out to convince Hobart this is the best of all possible ways forth. The building making Black’s sales mission particularly challenging sits rather tightly on a city block in Mid-town. The $75 million Hobart Apartments on Melville Street opened as student accommodation in late 2017, about six months before Black took up his post. What that means is we can’t really blame him for it not yet fulfilling its promise of urban renewal.
On the bright side, students are said to enjoy living in their mini apartments, though there have been complaints north-facing rooms are stifling on hot summer days. The building has pleasing communal cooking and dining spaces to bring students from Tasmania, interstate and around the world together. And its much-criticised foyer with a long stretch of glass frontage on Elizabeth St is as pleasant and full of potential within as it is both lonely and misunderstood from without.
If this is the future, we don’t want it is the word on the street. Plenty of people are aghast at the prospect of more of its kind coming to town, looming over heritage neighbourhoods. Physically, concerns fix on the building’s scale, site suitability and sensitivity to surrounding buildings rather than to the specific design in isolation. Confusion over which sections are for public use as well as the 430 students are another issue. Who knew there was a new three-hour public carpark accessed from Melville St, public toilets in the foyer and a shortcut from Elizabeth St up to Brisbane St via an off-street public plaza with turf and picnic tables?
We got Melville Street wrong in some ways, Black tells me. “The foyer is not a great piece of urban design.” Though he has deep experience in university builds, including the redesign of the Ormond College library at the University of Melbourne, which won national architecture awards, and the Wade Institute of Entrepreneurship, he says he says a defence approach serves no one.
“We have to take that on as an important lesson,” he says. “We have to be in learning mode. Melville Street building is a terrific place to live, but the ground floor doesn’t work and we need to make it work. I have spoken to the architects and the original intent was to create a good public space but for a number of reasons that happened along the journey, that intent wasn’t realised. Execution failed. And we need to fix it.”
With the project book-ended by limited public consultation and engagement during the planning process and little of the promised precinct vibrancy being realised so far, it’s hardly the opening gambit Black would have chosen for the epic relocation. Higher hopes are held for the university’s $96 million? Hedberg performing arts centre, a joint project incorporating the Theatre Royal with a purpose that makes it much more inviting. But it has its critics, too, concerned the new build now well advanced may unflatteringly dwarf the Theatre Royal, with the pair in turn crowded by the seemingly interminable Royal Hobart Hospital redevelopment on a site whose viability is still questionable.
If we are to judge his level of community engagement and respect, though, Black asks for it to be on the basis of his northern campus transformations, where he has stepped in to pull back on plans that were displeasing the local community, especially in Burnie.
“It really matters to us that as we set about doing these things we are doing them with the community and that at those critical formal points in the process that there can be an open public discussion.”
Indeed, that is something he welcomes, he says, promising that the Hobart community will experience a far more consultative process with proposed UTAS developments henceforth.
The university’s city move announcement set off a storm of protest, many in the form of letters to our editor published in the past few weeks, further raising suspicions and concerns and culminating in an opinion piece in our Talking Point pages by influential author Richard Flanagan two Saturdays, in which he urged Tasmanians to view the city move “with grave concern”. “It makes little sense, raises many unanswered questions and threatens to damage both Hobart and the university.”
Yes, the vice-chancellor indeed has his work cut out for him, but he also commands great respect, with even fellow Oxford University Rhodes scholar Flanagan pausing in his rhetoric to acknowledge Black as “a man of integrity and decency” before rushing on to say that beneath the VC, little appeared to have changed from the previous administration, “which acquired a notorious reputation as the worst developer in town”.
It’s another principle of psychology that the best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour. If the university and Hobart City Council have stumbled with Melville St, that’s a concern. But it’s nothing compared with Hobart’s alarming track record with historic building conservation, says Hobart antiques dealer and heritage expert Leslie Lauder.
Lauder does have a psychology degree, as it transpires, as well as a Member of the Order of Australia for services to heritage and the environment, but that’s not why I meet him at his Regency-rich antiques store in Campbell St. I’m here because last month Lauder inspired overwhelming applause at a public meeting at City Hall over city building height limits when he spoke passionately in favour of recognising the economic and social value of Hobart’s heritage landscapes.
I’m confident he will have given the university move plenty of thought. What I don’t realise is just how closely he has been monitoring the reveal, having been burnt before by the arrival of a university in his previous home town. While millions lament last month’s devastating fire damage to Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, Lauder is seared by his own Notre Dame experience – the arrival of a US-owned private university of that name in Fremantle’s historic West End in 1989.
“We were told it would bring great benefits to the city,” says the West Australian who moved to Tasmania two years ago. “They gradually took over more and more buildings with a promise to restore them, but really they just renovated them. I sat with the vice-chancellors and they said all these wonderful things, but they didn’t do most of it. What shocked us most of all was they managed to get the State Government to pass an individual Act of Parliament to make them rates-free, which means the 25,000 population of Fremantle is subsidising that corporation.”
Lauder says dozens of small businesses disappeared as the university grew. “And between semesters the West End is a ghost town, to this day. It has nothing like the vibrancy it had. It’s hard to see what true long-term benefits Notre Dame brought.”
Lauder first fell in love with Hobart back in the mid 1970s, when he visited as part of the Whitlam Government’s new heritage commission, back in the day when a proposal to knock down Salamanca’s sandstone warehouses to build apartments was being seriously considered. While he says the city has maintained its “rare ambience” despite significant heritage losses before and since, he is concerned by the damage a rash of insensitive developments, whether by the university or other developers, could wreak on the city.
He says that over the past few decades he has observed “steady erosion of the city’s character”, singling out the city’s 1987 Hotel Grand Chancellor as a prime example of how not to do city development. “Think of such a dismal failure as this, the way its street frontage on Macquarie is virtually a blank wall and does not interact with the city and people at all. It’s a beast, it’s awful and we haven’t learnt from that.”
Barista Sue Stagg set a Guinness World Record for making the most coffees in one hour a few years ago, but the owner of The Stagg espresso bar in Elizabeth St certainly doesn’t need that speed to meet student demand.
Just over two years ago, the Mercury reported that Stagg had opened her second Hobart cafe “squarely on the back of the UTAS new CBD residence”. At that time, she was expecting to put on two or three staff to cope with the expected influx of students, their friends and families “spilling out of the new apartments”.
As part of a pro-active independent retailers precinct that calls itself Midtown and works hard to foster economic and community development, Stagg wholeheartedly welcomed the students’ arrival. But she has picked up only 20 regular customers among the 500 or so students living in the Melville Street apartments opposite her business. While trade is strong with an alternative customer base that includes construction workers, passing tradies, emergency services personnel and city workers, “it could have been a very sad story,” says Stagg.
The coffee bar in the 100 year old building smells deliciously of chai spices as I head upstairs with Stagg. As we peer through old multi-paned windows over to the student accommodation, her letdown is palpable. “We wanted to provide something more to students than just what we sell, a chance to be part of something special, part of our community,” she says. “But we found it very hard to link in to the way the university does things. And that’s something we tried to resolve. It has been very frustrating.”
Recent meetings have been more promising between the precinct development committee she sits on and the university, she says. The former UTAS computer science and mathematics student is open to the idea of Hobart becoming more of a university city. “If this was a test case, I just hope they have learnt from it,” she says.
A couple of doors down from The Stagg, I meet Ben Wells, co-owner of the newish Grinners bar. Over Midnight Oil’s Beds are Burning, the UTAS business and marketing graduate tells me why he thinks the city move is a cool idea. “I have really liked university cities on my travels, including in Boulder, Colorado and Santa Barbara,” he says. “They work really well as cities and there were good vibes in all the bars.”
He hasn’t attracted much of a student clientele from across the road yet, but it’s early days. Later, a local chef tells me he sees plenty of students out treating themselves to bubble and macha tea at Gong Cha in nearby Liverpool St. Just north of the student accommodation, Island Espresso’s Marina Knezevic says customers are mostly excited by the proposed changes. “The inner city has lost its shoppers, so repurposing the city could be a really good thing, so long as it’s done right.”
Lord Mayor Anna Reynolds was portrayed by some critics as anti-development before she was elected last November, though she prefers to think of herself as discerning. She has a strong track record in grassroots community development, with Midtown’s activation and future beautification right up her alley. After her win, Reynolds predicted that if a freshly buoyant Hobart set high standards by demanding new developments respect the city’s character we would have a brain gain. Little did she know that within months the university would be on the march.
Urging the university to get more place-makers such as urban designers with skills in community engagement and development on its team, Reynolds says she is cautiously optimistic about the move announced last month and sees the potential for fruitful collaboration.
“We need to tackle city-growth challenges front on, whether UTAS is going to be the major developer in the city or Fragrance Hotel is going to be,” she says.
“With a UTAS developer, its timeframe is fairly long. It is not an overnight building scenario. We have some notice and ability to plan and shape this city development in a way that is potentially good for the broader Hobart community. If you have big lots in the city being purchased by a range of random private developers, you don’t necessarily have the ability to come together with them and talk about design and the urban street issues in a way we can do if the university process goes well.
“The potential is there to develop the city in a well-planned way that brings in the public interest while doing something different and innovative.
“The important caveat I put on is that the next year will be crucial for the university to seriously engage with the community to create a masterplan people are proud of, that doesn’t try to jam as many generic buildings as possible onto city blocks. We need beautiful buildings respectful of Hobart and for the university to invest in public spaces.”
She hopes that Black’s embrace of the Hobart City Council’s much admired 2018 Vision for Our Island bodes well as they work towards aligning their visions, with the council developing a Central Hobart Precinct Plan over the next year as the university develops its masterplan.
She says new university developments along Melville St would not negatively impact the potential of medium-density housing developing nearby. “There are dozens and dozens of underutilised areas currently being used around Argyle St for businesses including caryards,” she says. “Having more students in the city could help us change that from a complete commercial zone to one that is much more focused on medium-density housing.”
And while a compact is not yet signed off, she says the university will pay rates for all its facilities from day one. “It’s a dealbreaker for Hobart community,” she says. “Paying full rates on all of their buildings in city, including Menzies institute, is going to add a significant amount of money. If it was just the accommodation or education facilities, it will not be an adequate contribution.”
UTAS academic Helen Norrie is a fan of the plan. “I think this is an incredible opportunity for both the university and the city,” she tells me on the phone. “All the contemporary thinking around urban design says you don’t necessarily need more people in the city, you just need people to stay longer. That is what Jan Gehl said when he was here [to produce The Gehl Architects Report: Hobart 2010 – Public Spaces and Public Life, which called for buildings that ensured “delight for human senses” in a strongly pedestrianised city].
“And Gehl also says that universities are very interesting for that reason. He cites the examples of Oxford and Cambridge and a number of smaller university cities around the world where you get that sort of vibrancy of everyone bumping up against each other at different times. Instead of a campus being an isolated thing, disconnected from the city, a place you feel a bit like you need to be invited into, city campuses can potentially provide spaces that are part of the extended space of the city.”
AS UTAS comes to town, it is vital the public spaces it creates in the city do feel like civic places there for everybody to enjoy, she says. ”It is very important the university doesn’t conceive its new buildings as functional spaces for just university activities.” She says RMIT in Melbourne has created beautiful spaces to link with the city. “It has made a lot of beautiful sunny outdoor spaces out of the wind, internal pedestrian zones, cleaned up daggy old laneways, and we have a real opportunity to do something similar in Hobart. These spaces will be used by everyone if they are in the right places and designed in the right way.”
The slippage in all this hinges on design and execution, she says. “How much is people’s negativity towards the university because some of the buildings they’ve already put in the city haven’t had that generosity with that porosity between the public and the university?”
As for summer ghost town fears a la Notre Dame, could letting student accommodation as holiday rentals work? That sort of flexibility is highly desirable, she says. “Let these spaces become part of Hobart summer city,” she says. “Why not have the options of a 10-monthly fee for students with a two-month storage facility, or a year-round fee.
If the university is occupying so much of the city but only using it during the semester, it becomes very important how those buildings are to operate the other 20 weeks of the year. The big trick for universities is to break down this idea of ‘our’ facility. A lot of things can be physically built, but there’s also relationships that need to be built as well and a lot of that comes down to engagement. “The more that people can understand what happens in a university the better,” she says. “That’s really important in Tasmania where we have low educational attainment.”
She also sees the move as a catalyst for better public transport. “We can’t get the public transport working at the moment because people have such complex routes they need to travel in their day. Bringing a large anchor tenant such as the university to the city means you’ll have a bunch of people going to one place and presumably that will make buses and other public transport a viable option for people who will no longer have to change buses.”
What does the man who brought cold old Hobart alive on winter nights make of the university plan? I meet Leigh Carmichael down at Brooke Street Pier, not far from where he attended the university’s Hunter St art school as a quiet thoughtful lad from the Huon.
“I think it’s incredibly positive,” says the Dark Mofo creative director. And that’s not only because he’s a tad relieved the university didn’t eye off Macquarie Point, where a Mona masterplan he helped created includes expansive concert and entertainment spaces he is intent on ensuring are created. Urban activation is his thing and this has him excited.
“It is ripe with opportunity for what this city is. The aging demographic isn’t going to change unless we do something about it,” he says. “It will be great for the vibrancy, make-up and diversity of the city. We need far more people living in the city. I can only imagine what would happen if the whole 10,000-12,000 students expected in the city were here.”
He also sees it as a great chance to lift Tasmania’s education outcomes for coming generations. “If we get it right, if the education standards improve and if more people see university as an option, this could have a massive influence on how people from outside the state see us.
“Driving down Elizabeth St now, you can see that huge university logo above. That says education is important to us, and those things really matter. They can inspire people. Perception turns into reality.”
He agrees the university investment will have positive knock-on for public transport. “For the State government to be able to say with certainty the university is going to invest $600 million in the city over the next 10-15 years, it’s a case to invest properly in public transport, which could be done on a similar timeline.”
Cities are organic, he says. “I’m very concerned about that movement to lock down the city as some time of heritage museum, as if 2019 is the time when the city is finished and ready to start protecting. It has to continue to grow and respond to current technology.”
Carmichael thinks a move to the city could also help Tasmania retain more of its young people. “I hear that one in four Tasmanian students is moving away to study. We need to keep as many of them here to study as we possibly can. I think it’s a good place to learn. It’s conducive certainly to the creative industries.”
And what of dear old Sandy Bay?, I ask Rufus near the end of our conversation. Is the campus about to flog that off to the highest bidder? He reminds me that thouh the university’s scale may make it look like a business, it is not one and making money is not its reason for being. His whole rationale in the city move is to get the university on a sustainable financial footing for the good of the state, he says. And Sandy Bay? Just one block has been sold, he says, to the Hill Street IGA grocers. The university plans to hang on to the rest of the land. “We will continue to own it and see it developed to create both the capital and income the university needs. We can do that with long or capitalised leases if we want the money up front, and that means we can develop in line with the university’s very public-spirited values, which would be to see good quality community, the protection of the environment, diversity of housing and mixed use. That’s the plan. We will shape it. We think we can develop a whole section of Sandy Bay.
As I reach this point, I realise I have fallen into what turns out to be the classic trap. I haven’t spend enough time talking to students, so it’s only late in the piece I buttonhole a recent arts graduate for her take on the move. It seems I’m the first ever to ask her, and she says that’s typical.
“I feel for all the uni’s great and grand ideas, I do often think they forget to ask the students what they think,” she says. “I was never asked if I thought it would be a good idea to move the university to the city. Or whether it would be good for me. And on that front, it’s hard to say whether or not I support it, because it depends so much on the execution.
“Rufus may have hit the ground running, but has he been on the ground long enough to know the best way to do it for UTAS? I’m like, Whoa! Nobody really knows you yet. There have been so many situations when the students feel things have been built for hypothetical students and the real students just have to fit in. And by the way, could we just get our assignments reliably back to us on time?”
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