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Shadowy tower plan applies permanent sun screen

HIGH-RISE apartment blocks on the Carton & United Breweries site at Broadway will be so tall and dense that one-third of the units and the site's park will get only two hours of sunlight a day in mid-winter reports Sherrill Nixon Urban Affairs Editor Sydney Morning Herald 31st August 2006.

An expert panel guiding the site's development says statewide planning controls for solar access should be relaxed because of its "highly urbanised location" on the edge of the city.

That would mean up to 40 per cent of units in some blocks would only get sunlight between noon and 2pm in mid-winter, as would the 5000-square-metre park at the rear of the site and many terraces and offices in Chippendale.

But the panel's chairman, the former government architect Chris Johnson, says the amount of sunlight is better than many city apartments receive. The site's owner, Poster's, will reveal its plan for the site next month, which is expected to be largely in line with the panel's recommendations.

The panel's report was delivered to the Planning Minister, Frank Sartor, yesterday before its public release today. Mr Sartor appointed the experts when he seized planning control of the $1 billion development in June.

Chippendale residents and the City of Sydney Council now fear the minister will allow taller apartment blocks on the 5.8-hectare site than the council was prepared to accept, describing the potential result as a "mini-Manhattan on steroids".

The panel's report will fuel those concerns, recommending that two skyscrapers be allowed at the north-east of the site, opposite the 110 metre-high brown tower of the University of Technology, Sydney. One would be up to 36 storeys, or 110 metres - 10 metres higher than allowed by the council - with the other about 95 metres high. Buildings to the south and west of the towers would be up to 45 metres, while those along Abercrombie Street would be up to 25 metres.

But Professor Johnson said the recommended height limits struck the right balance between the need for a high-density development near Central Station and the scale of Chippendale. "The site is a classic missing piece in the jigsaw [of Sydney development] I guess, whereby the character of each side of this missing piece are all quite different," he told the Herald. "We have been professional in understanding we need to get a reasonable amount of development on this site. It's a critical urban site."

The panel's report recommends demolishing at least four buildings of heritage significance – in part to make way for a four-lane road. Buildings around the brewery yard would be adapted to demonstrate how the brewery operated in its heyday.

"We have got to make a trade-off here [between heritage and development'," Professor Johnson said.