The fight to reinvent Newcastle’s CBD has been stepped up, with Fix Our City campaigners hoping to bombard the Premier with images of dilapidated buildings.
The group believes it will encourage the state government to finally rubber stamp the Hunter Development Corporation’s city renewal report.
For years I have been making excuses to visitors of Newcastle for Hunter Street. What is primarily the gates to Newcastle City. This street has been like a derelict lifeless ghost town for over ten years that I know of.
I wouldn’t like to know the dollar value of lost tourism revenue from the impression this street has left brief visitors who then share their impression of Newcastle with friends and family.
Newcastle is one of the largest non capital cities in Australia. With the potential to be one of the greatest cities in the world to both live in and visit with rich culture and particularly lifestyle. Surely the funds for re establishing this area can be justified.
Where can I get the postcards?
I can’t believe that Newcastle still votes for the Labour Gov. when all we get is pure neglect. How many times has Newcastle lost important contracts and been overlooked because we are a safe seat??? The inner city is a dirty disgusting place to go and as far as shopping….forget it. How can we be an international port of call for cruise ships , how embarrassing.Get rid of the rail and open up the city to our beautiful harbour with parks and restaurants and watch Newcastle embrace it.
Why don’t you come and have a looke Mr Reece and see if you too would not be ashamed if it were your home city.
As a kid growing up in Newcastle i have great memories of late night shopping and the mall was packed with people and buzzing .Now we have empty shops and not many people in the mall at all.I dont really have an answer to the problem but we definetly need something.
You are being given a false dichotemy… that the city gets dilapidated or General Property Trust (GPT) Owns Newcastle CBD.
Locals would recall all of the overhead/overtrack walk ways that were purposely removed to create the problem, that people would compain, and the preconceived solution (GPT or otherwise) would be implimented to solve the created problem.
What the city needs I could prescribe, but then others would take credit for it and it won’t happen anyway.. since corrupt people would not get paid. One simple part of the solution though is getting rid of the parking meters.
It is like selling our minerals… get a few billion for them = ‘good’, but not when foreign nations buy trillions of dollars in resources, for a pitance, and ‘own them’ whilst still in the ground. If the corrupt (since presumably they cannot be too stupid to get voted in – even though the elections being ‘rigged’ in other nations, means that they could be as equally rigged here) sell off all of our money-making ability – then we will have nothing left to sell… and then what?
The countries disolve into regions, then one bunch of evil people control all the slaves?
Why is our once beautiful city rotting from neglect? The way the old Newcastle Post Office has been mistreated is a crime. What exactly does the Newcastle City Council spend their ratepayers hard earned cash on?
Based on another council, which I am familiar with… they probably spend a few million dollars on ‘consultancy fees’ for ‘climate change’, ‘council building / property advice’ (not including the maintenance – that is separate). There is a lot of corruption about, the power of councillors is quite negligable compared to the ‘administrators’, and the councillors could be gotten rid of since they are the ones who are told what to do, and what they cannot do… as opposed to the ‘elected’ telling the ‘administration/beaurocrats’ what to do (within limits). Much of the council problems is to do with State and Federal Governments – with much of the State Govt. problems being due to the Federal Government actively dissolving the States (through ‘salami tactics’/’gradualism’ the unelected High Court of Aust – Uniform Tax Cases 1 & 2).
Under our Constitution (The Nations Laws) we are a Federation, that is that the States are ment to have most of the power, but not for certain specific things laid out – Army, Military, Quarantine, etc.).
Just like the ‘Salami’ used, ‘one slice at a time’ to wreck Newcastle, to devalue it, to flogg it off to GPT (or Whomever), to do it up, to increase the rental price (they would not be silly enough to Sell Newcastle after Buying it…); the Federal Gov. it destroying the states so that ‘Australia’ can be ‘a state’ of ‘The Asia-Pacific Union’ (or whatever name it will go by) then futhur dissolving will create one country to rule all of the ‘states’.
Just like in Europe, trade union/customs union/political union. The Treaty of Lisbon (a few words different from the out-rightly rejected European Constitution) basically creates the EU as the country, Britain, etc. as states (then the borders aregoing to be furthur dissolved and altered so for instance Southern England and Norther France becomes one ‘administrative unit’ (state), Mid Eng was joined with perhaps the Benelux countries, Scotland with some divided Scandinavian lands, etc. (some EU Parlimentarians ‘leaked out’ the new maps. The redivision, and redistribution of people created obscelence in ‘nationality’… and Marx (Mordecai Levi) and a couple of other books, one set religious text from Babylon around 400AD, some memos from meetings in Russia, etc. stated that ‘to transition people into being conquered (in conquering the world), you cannot say ‘hey you Englishman, you are now Earthlingman; that encourages more resistance, and more of our people will diein conquering the enemy, so we will regionalize them 1st. After multiculturalism, mixed marraiges, destroying the concepts of marraige, family, sexualising the people, spreading disease shall be used to destroy ‘Rome’ (read as ‘Christianity and then as ‘white people’… we will create three world wars, or even the threat of the 3rd war, people will willingly trade their freedom for ‘security’ (hence a US President warned against that…), then we take power after pretending to be for ‘equality’ (to get the masses to rise up against their natural leaders – the leaders/aristocracy benefits from happy healthy workers in real life – and offer real security, cohesion and protection in return) – then we will start killing (depopulating the world at a larger rate) the non-our combined race/religion, and have 2800 of the non-us as slaves each… we will have our 3rd temple and our messiah (Christian and Muslim Anti-Christ)…
2 paraphrased Quotes:
In order to know who rules a people, just ask yourself who can you least question? – Orson Wells or George Orwell
“Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” — Benito Mussolini
There is no qick fix to this problem but the Renew Newcastle Project is helping. There are now OPEN shops in the mall. These shops have been renovated. You know, put some money into it?NOt take it away from shoppers at the parking metre.Since having a shop in the mall my eyes are open to the number of tourists who ask”is this city in crisis?’,is this it?how did this happen when there is such potential?
I believe the decay started with the earthQuake.Landlords didnt use all their insurance money to upgrade their property and left buildings far less attractive as leasholds ,in comparrison to the newer and now visited by habbit(due to cbd damage)Kotara fair, with its FREE undercover parking.How to attract customers back? Easy, fuss over Trains and stations and big property developers for years,just to make things more stable and attractive to bussinesses.Add to that parking fees to shop there…..Both bussiness abnd customers were the loosers but ultimetely Newcastle looses,jobs,reputation and heart.Next came another natural disaster..flood.Remember the Pasha, our tourists do and they remamber our sad main street.
Whats wrong with the inner city being a hub for restaurants , coffee and art. Its started, we just need a boost of funds to aid the transition. Think of specialty designers, gourmet eats, a bit of an arty, creative feel, all near the harbour and beach(a bit like the rocks or morpeth)
Come in and see what has started in the humblest of ways, thanks to a former local who loved the city so much he felt compelled to ACT. Its worth the parking metre fee.There is a small but building BUZZ in the mall. Be a part of that and more bussinesses can keep there doors open an prosper in the inner city.
Newcastle council should charge owners of neglected builings with the cost of fixing up the facades,they say that council does not have the authority to do this well, CHANGE THE LAWS SO THAT THEY CAN DO IT!!!! surely it is better than sitting on their hands as they seem to be doing.Lets be proud of our city again!!
I seriously can not believe how our city had decayed. My grandmother is a member of the Merewether family and our family, has donated things like blackbutt reserve, the Merewether baths, financed the begining of the Cathederal and countless other projects for this city. For over 10yrs now my family has gone to amazing lengths to keep an 80yo lady from seeing what her city has become. It would kill her to think the streets she walked with her grandfather have become second to many eastern european cities.
It just beggers belief that our beautiful city has been allowed to fall to ruin as it has. I firmly place the blame on not only the state government for its continuing neglect, but also the city council for seemingly bieng unable to act apon a single capital works program. Our council has become redundant and ineffectual. We need to as a city, change this or nothing will ever change. WE HAVE LONG BEEN NEGLECTED AND THIS MUST END!
As a former owner of a business in the city’s west end, I am disgusted that our city looks the way it does today. We as Novacastrians should be ashamed of the way our city looks. I hesitate to take our visitors through the city and would rather take them to the coastline so that they can view our beautiful beaches but not our derelict city.
Let’s stand up and fight for our city and be proud of our city once again.