The changing face of Redfern and Waterloo

Dependent on the success of this project is the revitalisation of the Court House as a Community Health Centre. Thus we see the loss of three facilities - hospital, court, and police station – to facilitate the movement of the health centre from the Rachel Foster site, thus making way for the commercial redevelopment of the hospital site.

Without the development of one we can't have the creation of the other.

The following facilities have now been lost to area residents – the Public School, Rachel Foster Hospital, the Missionhome aged care facility, the courthouse, and the Old Police Station with its overnight holding cells. They are to be reinvented as an Indigenous sporting complex, private apartments and the relocated Health Centre. All these properties now stand empty waiting for eventual redevelopment. There is nothing new here for local residents, however with the loss of Rachel Fosters Hydrotherapy unit leaving older residents to find places out of the area. The practice of public redevelopment by private investment is now to be extended to the Redfern Railway Station upgrade. Unlike other railway stations which have been redeveloped by Railcorp and the Transit Authority, Redfern Station must be paid for by other developments in the area. The selling of one piece of land to pay for the development of another is the plan of the Redfern Waterloo Authority (RWA) for the area. These plans are expressed in the Built Environment Plan which calls for the privatisation of urban revitalisation.

As with the redevelopment scheme that has been established by the Department of Housing to develop the Elizabeth St block opposite Redfern Park, so will more redevelopment involve these type of arrangements? We can expect to see old style walkups make way for more of these redevelopments in the near future as the RWA makes its final recommendations for changing the face of Redfern and Waterloo. No other suburb has its own Minister or a development authority to oversee its redevelopment and one must wonder why Redfern/Waterloo has to be the guinea pig for such an experiment.

Residents must wonder what gains they will get from all this as we are made to pay again and again for what should be government supported services.

Source: REDWATER NEWS - The Redfern and Waterloo Neighbourhood Advisory Boards Newsletter - December 2007 (PDF 856 KB)