Heritage is so often in this city, and others, inconsistently applied.
Historic or otherwise significant sites in certain suburbs (usually with certain property values) are protected at all costs by their communities, while developers progressively raze and rebuild other neighbourhoods as taller, greyer and tighter every three decades.
The Herald has repeatedly drawn attention to the need to interrogate heritage protections as Sydney deals with a housing crisis.
Last year, Inner West Council revealed that 43 per cent of its municipality was under some form of heritage protection, including all of Haberfield and much of Balmain. The city’s heritage conservation areas are concentrated in the inner west, north and east, where they make development difficult and expensive. Many western Sydney councils have few or none.
But heritage is a balancing act. Sydney must be protected for future generations while also being adapted to serve their needs.
And so we come to a Mosman toilet block with no women’s changeroom.
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As Megan Gorrey reports today, plans to build new sports facilities at Middle Head, on the lower north shore, are facing resistance from heritage advocates, who argue that the upgrades will open the door to more intensive development of the public parkland.
The plan in question comes from Mosman Council. The council wants to demolish an ageing toilet block next to Middle Head Oval and replace it with a new building and an “open-sided shelter” featuring concrete bench seating and a canopy.
The fate of the council’s $5 million proposal will be decided by Sydney Harbour Federation Trust, a federal government agency that oversees former Defence sites around the foreshore.
Read the full article here
