• Site description
• Site history
• Strategies & policies
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  • Cultural policy
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Strategies & policies

Strategies and policies shaping Civic Place

Current planning controls for the Civic Place site are detailed in Sydney Regional Environmental Plan No. 5, which has been the statutory planning document (with various amendments) since 1983.

Chatswood CBD strategy (1997) and development of the Civic Place Masterplanning Brief

Development pressures and the changing needs and aspirations of the community and Council, meant that SREP 5 was no longer able to meet the requirements as a planning framework for Chatswood. During 1998 and 1999 Council commissioned an extensive study to assess the existing planning controls, the opportunities and constraints of the Chatswood CBD, and to develop a set of documents to provide a strategic framework for Chatswood’s future development. As a result of the study, a draft urban strategy was prepared and exhibited in 1999.

The Draft Chatswood CBD Masterplan identified Civic Place as the most significant site in the CBD. Exhaustive community consultation revealed a consistent theme: that this most valuable public site should, through its redevelopment, become the “heart and soul” of Willoughby City.

The urban strategy consequently proposed the redevelopment of Civic Place, to provide an integrated range of public buildings, including performance halls, enlarged library, art spaces, public art spaces and open space on the site.

The strategy proposed Civic Place should be:

“a grand civic site, designed so that buildings of significant architectural importance and serene open spaces work together to draw the community to it. In every sense it is to be the heart and soul of Willoughby City – a unique public domain providing a refuge from, yet one which perfectly complements, the demanding commercial context within which the site sits. It is to be strategically and appropriately linked to its neighbours, and is to be designed so as to encourage and improve pedestrian amenity.”

The strategy identified the following major issues for the Civic Place site:

• The aim is to achieve a grand civic space, centred on the road and forming an appropriate centre for the buildings through the integrated development of the site and the design of Victoria Avenue.
• The site provides significant opportunities to enhance pedestrian amenity and safety, and public space. The site is used as a major thoroughfare between the retail complexes of Westfield and Chatswood Chase, and can be utilised to relieve the pressures of footpath crowding on Victoria Avenue and Archer Street.
• The site may present opportunities for appropriate and complementary revenue generating development.
• The site layout and built form must lead to the best possible relationship with that of the adjacent schools. Ease of school access in Ferguson Lane is essential.
• The built form must ensure winter sun access to Victoria Avenue.
• Public functions (the library and performance halls) may be consolidated towards Anderson Street
• Some commercial / retail development may be located on the easterly half of the site to facilitate movement between Chatswood Chase and Westfield. Council is cautious however about the introduction of commercial or retail activities which are not related to the public use of the site. A preference is expressed for revenue generating development which encourages and supports the use of the Library, Performance Halls, public art and open spaces.
• Greater public space around Victoria Avenue may be achieved by repositioning floor space currently fronting Victoria Avenue to the north, and by creating a major, “soft” open space forward of the library and halls.
• Opportunities for the schools’ use of one or more strata of a building on the Civic centre site
• Basement carparking may be developed.

The strategy also contemplated the demolition and redevelopment of shops fronting Victoria Avenue, the demolition of the Administration building, the demolition and redevelopment of the Town Hall and Bailey Hall, the acquisition and demolition of shops fronting Victoria Avenue at the western end and Anderson Street and the development of public carparking and the expansion and redevelopment of the library.