That was back when inner Sydney,still cheap enough for the artistic riff-raff,was at its creative zenith. But market forces,over time,yield a kind of natural succession of species. Artists,always the colonisers,are followed by vibrant commerce,then dull conformity then,eventually,by death. Only then,once mortality is acknowledged and death rites given,is resurrection possible.
Oxford Street,after that 70s creative flair,evolved through the 80s and 90s into high-end but original shopping. Its price gradient – from chi-chi Woollahra to the drag-bags of Darlinghurst’s “pink precinct” – broadly echoed height above sea level. Popularity skyrocketed. But when rents followed the original shops were replaced by legions of dreary chain stores,leaving the street vulnerable to attack-by-mall.
Enter Westfield Bondi Junction. Had it happened 20 years earlier,or not at all,Oxford Street might have been fine. But,built in 2003,the mall sucked the chain stores out of Oxford Street,killing its retail life stone dead. A decade later the ill-conceived lockout laws did the same for its wild and wonderful nightlife. Neither has recovered,partly because rent expectations stayed high. So Oxford Street now is like a gap-tooth smile,blighted by vacancy and neglect.
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What’s bizarre is that the latest remedy for this obdurate emptiness is yet more floorspace.
Thecity’s masterplan,devised by architects Studio Hollenstein,allows two extra storeys on top of every building in Oxford Street’s Darlinghurst section and up to four extra floors on Taylor Square. This involves 52 listed buildings and 132 “contributory” buildings along the strip. It will also let the National Art School (the old Darlinghurst Gaol) build a further 2000 square metres within its already crowded and heritage-listed grounds.
The plan is designed to assuage “demand” for large-floorplate businesses too big for the old shophouse fabric by enabling two-storey additions of much larger footprint to spread across several such shophouses. This new work,although set back three metres from Oxford Street,will still be largely visible as a great impost above the old. At the rear,meanwhile,the full four or more storeys will dominate and overshadow the tiny laneways,often only six metres wide.