Wednesday 22 August 2018

Construction site, 21-43 Harris Street, Pyrmont

They’re building a new edifice on this now-prepared site on Harris Street near the light rail station in Pyrmont. The site has long been vacant.

The building at the right behind the empty space sits across a narrow street and over the station itself, supported by thick concrete pylons that descend to the level of the tracks. They sit nestled among the rails where the trains run sedately on their way either east or west. The tracks lie at the bottom of a deep cutting in the sandstone made for an industrial rail line that was used a long time ago, and the platforms are accessed by five flights of stairs and by lifts.

Behind the same yellow apartment block also is a square where there are cafes, a sandwich shop, a Thai restaurant, a dental clinic, and a duty-free goods store that tourists use when they come in those plain white buses you see on our streets. Up one level from the square is another Thai restaurant, a Chinese restaurant, and the back entrance to a local pub. There is another pub across the street named the Terminus Hotel, which was renovated recently and now also serves meals along with alcohol.

So the whole area is heavily developed and most of the local retailers rely on trade provided by the office buildings such as the big one that stands behind me where I took this picture, across the road from the building site. Workers come to work on the train and buy their morning coffees in the square before going to their offices to work for the day.

The council’s development application says that there will be a seven-storey commercial building constructed on the site, involving excavation for 3.5 levels of basement car parking for 190 vehicles, retail and commercial spaces at street level, a childcare centre and six levels of commercial office space. Local retailers will be happy once it’s finished. The noise has mainly stopped for the moment. The banging of hydraulic pile drivers and mechanised jackhammers has stopped now that the hole has been finished ready for construction to begin.


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