THE council calls it “eclectic”. Residents call it “better than Balmain” and like “living in an episode of Grand Designs”.
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Whatever word you use, developers long ago cottoned on to Wickham – the quirky, post-industrial ugly stepsister of Newcastle’s west end – as one of the key suburbs in Newcastle’s surging property market, and now the city’s council is seeking to take advantage.
This week Newcastle City Council released a draft masterplan for Wickham that, if adopted, would allow developments as high as 20 storeys in some parts of the suburb.
The masterplan raises the prospect of building 1200 new homes and apartments in the suburb by 2040 on the back of the strategic shift of the city centre from east to west.
To reach that target the council has come up with a plan to establish a “community benefit policy” in Wickham that would use increased building heights in some parts of the suburb as an “incentive” for developers that delivered “community benefit” projects like public parking and “public domain and open space embellishments”.
“It’s really important to have a plan for Wickham that includes significant amount of public amenity,” Newcastle Lord Mayor Nuatali Nelmes told the Newcastle Herald.
“Not just development for sake of development, but development that improves the amenity of the suburb for the people who live there, and for visitors.”
As part of the policy building height limits would rise from eight to 14 storeys at rail-side land along Station Street and the south-eastern side of Wickham Park – land currently owned by the NSW government – and from 15 to 20 storeys at land along Stewart Avenue and Dangar and Charles Streets.
And there’s scope for increased heights on the harbour too. While the masterplan takes a “conservative approach” – four storeys – on harbourside properties, it suggests “greater scale” could be possible “where design excellence is demonstrated”.
The payoff for higher buildings, at least according to the masterplan, would be “improved amenity”.
That includes a plan to remove the physical barrier cutting the urban part of the suburb off from Wickham Park by removing the fenced off area around the old Bullock Island rail corridor.
Once a rail line connecting Wickham to the Bullock Island Colliery in Carrington, the land – still mostly owned by NSW Rail Corporation – has long been part of plans to improve connections between Wickham and its neighbouring suburbs.
In 2008 the former Lord Mayor John Tate suggested turning the “Bullock Island” corridor into a major road to alleviate traffic pressure from Stewart Avenue.
The idea would have seen traffic diverted from the Cowper Street roundabout through Wickham, over the rail line and into Parry Street, west of the Sacred Heart Cathedral.
But the plan now would instead see a new one-way road along the southern edge Wickham Park linking Maitland Road with Holland Street and high-rise development on the corner of the park.
It’s a radical makeover for a suburb once neglected as a semi-industrial wasteland on the city’s fringe.
But Wickham has long been ear-marked for future development because of its proximity to the booming west and lack of mine subsidence restrictions.
Developers have noticed, and property values in Wickham sky-rocketed. In Albert Street, bordering Wickham Park, land values shot up 35 per cent between 2015 and 2016, from $321,000 to $433,000.
“Everything is changing, people are paying a million dollars for blocks of land and developers from Sydney are coming up and buying property, it’s going berserk,” long-time resident and community activist Lyn Kilby said.
“But we’ve known this was coming for 25 years, if anyone was starting to worry about bigger buildings in Wickham now then they’ve been asleep.”
For another resident, Luke Donkin, in Fleming Street, the suburb offers the perfect lifestyle.
“Living here feels like being in an episode of Grand Designs,” he said.
“Everywhere you look there’s a warehouse that has been turned into some amazing building … even in the areas that are still quite industrial there’s places likes Dark Horse Espresso and the Inner City Winemakers, there’s always interesting little things popping up.
“You’re spoiled for choice in terms of coffees, breakfasts, things to do.”
Parking plan might have a price tag too
NEWCASTLE City Council has flagged the idea of introducing paid parking to Wickham in a bid to help ease the increasing demand for space in the suburb.
A perfect storm of increased development, the loss of parking in neighbouring Honeysuckle and the looming arrival of the new transport interchange in Wickham has meant that parking has become an increasing bugbear for residents of the harbour-side suburb.
In November the Newcastle Herald reported that some residents had taken to leafleting cars with signs saying parking was for locals only.
One company, solar electricity retailer Urth Energy, that it was planning on moving its 30 employees out of the suburb to a new home in Lake Macquarie – though the business was placed into voluntary administration earlier this year.
That’s bad news for the council, whose vision for the suburb includes a denser residential base coupled with “smarter” low-intensity manufacturing employers.
State government developer Urbangrowth has said it is working on a “parking strategy” for Newcastle as the city faces up to losing more than 1000 spots in the coming years.
Urbangrowth boss Michael Cassel says the strategy is “nearing completion”, but in its new Wickham Masterplan the council admits solutions from that yet-to-be-seen document are “unlikely to be realised in the short to medium timeframe”.
And, as the city’s commercial core continues to shift west, the council believes the situation is likely to get worse once the new interchange is complete.
“The absence of public car parking facilities being provided as part of the Newcastle Transport Interchange is likely to increase demand in adjoining areas, particularly within a five-minute walkable catchment,” the draft masterplan reads.
“Whilst the purpose of the interchange is to provide a transition between modes of public transport and not act as a park-and-ride facility, demands are anticipated to remain high until a streamlined public transport solution or park and ride facility outside of the city centre are provided.”
The solution, at least for now, might be the introduction of paid parking and a multi-level carpark at one of three potential sites – near Charles Street, Foundry Street or a site toward the southern end of Railway Street.
It may also mean the introduction of parking permits for existing residents, but not for new developments, something that Greens Councillor Therese Doyle warned at Tuesday’s council meeting “might be a little bit inequitable”.
However any decision on permits or paid parking would need to come back to council before any decision was made, a fact noted by councillor Declan Clausen.