Ian Kirkwood writes: Our city's heart needs a kickstart

Those who were around then will remember the tune and Hudson's words of advice to the lovelorn of Hunter Street to "Never let a chance go by, oh Lord".

Those who were born too late can find it online.

It's true that Hudson's references to "beautiful looking sheila(s)" and "the very strange mating habits . . . up in Newcastle" reek of an old-school sexism that has more or less disappeared from polite society.

But it's an appropriate bit of pop culture for these purposes because it recalls a city that was bustling with people, which is not exactly the image that springs to mind whenever I find myself in the Newcastle "central business district": this is fairly often given the Herald's offices are on Hunter Street, and that I live on the outskirts of town.

Whatever the CBD is now, it is not what I would call bustling. Or even busy.

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I know COVID has had a terrible impact on many sectors of the economy, and so it's impossible to to really tell how much of Hunter Street's present state is a result of the coronavirus and its restrictions, and how much is down to the disruption that was caused by shutting the road - more or less - for two years to install the light rail.

But it seems to me that the CBD has even more vacant shopfronts and upper storey office space to rent than it had when the heavy rail still ran to an operating Newcastle Station, when the decrepit state of the place had led many - the Herald included - to call on government to "do something".

Well, the NSW government did "do something", and the results stand as a reminder to "be careful what you wish for".

Before I wheel out a list of the problems, I should start by saying that things aren't all bad.

On the positive side I have admired from the start the way Sam Arnout's Iris Capital has gone about transforming its holdings in the Hunter Street mall.

It's to be expected, but most of the new high-rise buildings that have sprung up - and are still springing up - in the CBD and around the new "centre" of the city at Wickham are either cookie-cutter apartments or variations on the ubiquitous glass tower, with little beyond differing tints in the window panes to tell them apart.

The East End project, by contrast, offered individuality and a fit with the existing streetscape, and so far, at least, I'd say it's under-promised and over-delivered.

A rare occurrence given that how many projects look far less appealing in real life than they did in the glossy artist's impressions.

But the mall has nothing directly to do with the hundreds of millions of dollars the state government poured into "Revitalising Newcastle".

It was nine years ago, on December 13, 2012, when Brad Hazzard - our present Health Minister but back then the planning minister - finally confirmed the O'Farrell government's decision to cut the heavy rail line at Wickham.

Removing the "Berlin Wall" between the CBD and the waterfront would trigger a wave of private sector development, Hazzard said at the time.

Labor, the Greens, and the long-term thorn in the side of the government - lobby group Save Our Rail - were all opposed to the decision, which Liberal Tim Owen, as Newcastle state MP, and developer Jeff McCloy, as our short-lived lord mayor, were enthusiastic about.

Nothing unexpected in any of that. And the following quote, from McCloy, really does encapsulate the expectations of many at the time.

''In time, if you take photographs of Newcastle now and Newcastle in 10 years time, you will see what an amazing change has happened in the city," he had told the Herald that day.

OK. Maybe 2022 is going to be a smashingly successful year and the rows of empty shops will be filled and a barrage of new businesses will arrive to take up office space.

But I somehow doubt it. If I was any good at predicting the future I'd have punted my way to an early and luxurious retirement, but I can't see things looking too different in a year's time.

Indeed, the way Hunter Street is configured now, I find the promised transformation a very difficult prospect to imagine.

Here's why.

The Hunter Street of old had just one real mode of transport to deal with. The motor vehicle.

Mainly cars, but also the cavalcades of buses from routes that mostly came and went from the top of town.

The decision to swing the tracks onto Hunter Street east of Worth Place unavoidably elevated the light rail above motor transport.

Not only did the space for the tracks cut the road to a single lane in either direction, it also put paid to many of the parking spaces that once ran along both sides of the road for much of its length.

Add a new set of slower speed limits into the mix and you have a road so tedious to navigate that anyone with another option gives it a wide berth.

And if these changes weren't enough, the need to provide a long-promised cycleway through town has claimed further lengths of gutter-lane space, delineated by rows of flexible rubberised poles in black and yellow, designed to ensure motorists don't drift into the space dedicated to unprotected flesh on two wheels.

The fact they are needed in the first place surely shows the overall space is too narrow for the tasks being asked of it.

The end result - a main street that is neither fish nor fowl - has created flow-on effects along King Street to one side and Honeysuckle Drive/Wharf Road on the other, as they became the favoured routes for anyone needing to get around town.

In a way, this was part of the grand scheme of things, part of a state government/City of Newcastle push to get people out of their cars and onto pushbikes or the tram.

That's all very well, but simply because a government wants people to act a certain way doesn't mean they will, and so Novocastrians - displaying an annoying brand of determination - are as wedded to their cars now as they were when Hunter Street was a navigable thoroughfare.

And they are voting with their feet - or their steering wheels - and staying well away from town.

For all of the talk about a shortage of parking spaces - and they should be in short supply, given how many have been lost - I've never had any real difficulty finding a parking space in town since the work began.

To me it's one of the clearest indicators that what we've got now is a prettier, but emptier, version of what we began with.

I can't be the only one to notice the city has more movement at weekends than during the week.

Unfortunately, after all of this belly-aching, I don't have an obvious solution to what I would characterise as an equally obvious problem.

But I do think the state of the CBD has to be a priority for the incoming Newcastle councillors, even if the responsibility lies more broadly with the NSW government, which privatised our publicly owned port to provide the money it poured into light rail and the associated works of "revitalisation".

If it is to remain a central business district in anything other than name, then ways must be found to encourage more employers into the city. Ditto for retail.

Otherwise, we have a toy train - if that is not too cruel a term - running up and down a largely deserted street and unlikely to ever be extended. Without subsidies, the losses would be enormous.

The inevitable failure to preserve the rail corridor as originally promised makes it much harder to undo the damage, which in turn makes it harder to justify the light rail, because I don't see how passenger numbers could ever even approach the levels built into the modelling used to justify the outlays in the first place.

Yes, as I said, two years of COVID have taken their toll, but they can't be used as an excuse.

Because as things stand, I'd have to say that Joan Dawson and Save Our Rail were more right than wrong when they warned that cutting the rail line at Wickham would "decapitate" the city.

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