Brad Hazzard could not have been clearer.
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"I can make it very clear, 100 per cent, that our intent is that it stays in public ownership for the long haul. There's no intent whatsoever to go handing it over to developers. What we're really talking about here is a guaranteed, no doubt about it, it stays in public ownership and must remain as a potential corridor."
With these words, the former NSW planning minister announced in December 2012 that the government was cutting Newcastle's rail line at Wickham.
Fast forward almost seven years and the state's Hunter and Central Coast Development Corporation has just placed the final available section of the corridor on the market as a redevelopment site.
The 4125-square metre block, evocatively badged "Rail Bridge Row" in marketing material, has been earmarked for residential and commercial development.
Other sections of the rail corridor have been sold to developers for apartment and office buildings, to University of Newcastle and to non-profit Evolve Housing for affordable units since Newcastle City Council rezoned the land in 2017.
The government's rezoning application was backed by a Property Council campaign railing against "NIMBY groups".
Whether you agree with developing the corridor or not, it is at least worth noting that the government has not done what it said it would do in 2012.
By 2016, Transport Minister Andrew Constance had made it clear the corridor was no longer required for transport.
Mr Constance and the then Planning Minister Rob Stokes warned of a "wasteland on the waterfront" and a "$100 million in investments" lost if the council deferred a decision on the vote to rezone the corridor.
Greens councillor John Mackenzie is not alone in suggesting the city's parking and cycling challenges are a consequence of not preserving the corridor for pedestrians, cyclists and the tram itself.
HCCDC pocketed $6.6 million in May from the sale of the "Darby Plaza" site to GWH Group for an eight-storey office building on the rail corridor.
Property sales in the city are helping fund projects such as the Market Street Lawn, Newcastle station's restoration and adjoining plaza, Museum Park and the $55 million landscaping of the Honeysuckle waterfront.
Clearly, construction projects are providing much-needed jobs and lifting the local economy at a time when, as Paul Keating said this week, the national economy "is idling".
And while the government counts the millions it has made from selling off the corridor, many in the community will wonder what might have been had it stayed in the public ownership that Mr Hazzard spoke of back in 2012.
A wasteland on the waterfront?
Or was it an opportunity wasted?
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