Private proposals for White Bay Power Station rejected as NSW government seizes control
The historic White Bay Power Station will not be handed over to one major developer, after the Baird government rejected 13 private sector proposals for the site’s transformation.
In a move away from the single-developer model that handed Lendlease swaths of land at Barangaroo and Darling Harbour, the 10-hectare site in Rozelle will be broken into smaller parcels and the development staged.
An aerial view of Sydney with White Bay power station circled. Photo: Supplied
“This will not be an exercise where government hands over large areas of public land and gives away control, without ensuring good outcomes for the community,” Planning Minister Rob Stokes said.
The government wants to turn the power station, which closed in 1983, and surrounding lands into a technology and innovation precinct. It called for the private sector to develop plans for the site last year.
It is understood consortiums involving Lendlease and Google, Mirvac and Ecoworld made bids for the site, but in a surprise turnaround the government knocked back all 13 proposals.
Opposition planning spokesman Michael Daley said it was “completely bizarre” that no proposal had any merit and accused the government of changing its approach to the project at the last minute.
“I find it impossible to believe that not a single one of the 13 tenders had any merit in it,” Mr Daley said.
“The government seems to have changed its mind on its preferred model halfway through the tender process but still put the tenderers to the expense of finalising their proposals. It all seems quite bizarre, and at any event it’s just a shemozzle.”
NSW Premier Mike Baird and Planning Minister Rob Stokes at White Bay Power Station. Photo: Edwina Pickles
John Brogden, who is chairman of the government’s property development arm UrbanGrowth NSW, which will manage the site, said the proposals relied too heavily on housing density to offset the cost of remediation and it was “disappointing”.
“We put it out to the market, the market didn’t comply. No one complied, full stop. Therefore the government needs to step back in, in order to provide its own vision,” Mr Brogden said.
“We will master-plan it, design it and cut it up in chunks and then tender it out to the private sector.”
The Australian Institute of Architects NSW chapter president Shaun Carter welcomed the move, saying the public interest would be better protected if the government managed the development project.
“Developing large-scale areas of the city with one single developer lacks the diversity, richness and public interest good city making fundamentally requires,” Mr Carter said.
“We need the government to represent the public’s interest by developing the streets, footpaths, parks and all public domain, allocating building lots for private sale based on a well considered master plan.”
The transformation of the power station and surrounding lands has been marked as priority by the government as part of a broader redevelopment of the Bays Precinct in inner Sydney.
But Urban Taskforce chief executive Chris Johnson said the fact the private sector could not meet the government’s criteria revealed potential problems with its vision for the site.
“The government has been strongly promoting it as a technology hub, and calling for the private sector to make this into a bustling technology hub, but it may be that’s not the right and best use for it, if the private sector has not been able to stack this up economically,” Mr Johnson said.
UrbanGrowth NSW will now partially pay for the rehabilitation and restoration of the site, but no figure has been released on how much this will cost.
Mr Brogden said the agency will focus on securing suitable tenants for the power station by the end of the year.
