The Fate of Eveleigh: More of 'Ugly Sydney' or an Enhancement of the Greatest Rail Heritage Site in the World?

Lovers of heritage and of a human-scale city alike are alarmed at the latest proposal for the old Eveleigh Railway Workshops site that covers many hectares of inner Sydney. The New South Wales Government Planning Minister Frank Sartor has recently excised the area from heritage protection legislation in order to allow maximum possible development of the site for high-rise apartment blocks. Of particular concern is the current threat to close the still functioning Large Erecting Shed and transform it into either a completely new 12 storey office tower or an 'adaptive re-use' four storey block. Unfortunately, the concerns of community groups, even if they represent a majority of citizens, mean little to contemporary Governments, especially at the State level. This is particularly true of the New South Wales Government, which is in the perverse position, after 15 years of uninterrupted economic boom, of being squeezed between accelerated development brought on by the boom and declining tax revenue exacerbated by the increasingly unequal power distribution between the States and Canberra.