PUSH FOR HERITAGE GROUP

YOUR article "Grand plans for Eveleigh" (Central, January 14) confuses issues from a concept plan for North Eveleigh and the separate proposal to lease the Australian Technology Park. The plan does not guide the usage of the site by whoever wins the 99-year lease (which only covers the Australian Technology Park).

The scant detail in the Redfern Waterloo Authority's two-page heritage interpretation strategy has no relevance to what a buyer of the park may or may not do with the state, national and internationally significant industrial heritage they will acquire as part of the lease.

Contrary to your article, heritage groups remain concerned about many heritage issues both at the ATP and in the area covered by the RWA's North Eveleigh Concept Plan.

On October 28, 2008 a wide range of heritage groups, practitioners, ex-workers and heritage volunteers met at the ATP to discuss heritage concerns across the former railway site which includes the ATP, North Eveleigh, the Large Erecting Shop and Redfern Station. The meeting was concerned that to date there has been no discussions between heritage groups and the RWA or the ATP over how the heritage of the various sites will be handled.

The meeting wrote to the Minister for Redfern Waterloo requesting the establishment of a mechanism that brings together relevant government authorities and heritage groups to ensure a heritage and tourism strategy for the entire former Eveleigh rail yards is developed and implemented.

Under the plans eight to 10 different bodies (including some government agencies) will own and have responsibility for different parts of the former Eveleigh rail yards. Heritage groups want an integrated heritage strategy across the entire site rather than a number of mini strategies that may or may not be complimentary.

We are pushing the RWA and the minister to set up a Heritage Working Group as soon as possible to ensure there is a robust heritage element in the government's "Grand plans of Eveleigh" and that the site's heritage assets are not further degraded in the redevelopment

-          GEOFF TURNBULL, REDWatch spokesman

Source: Central 28 January 2009