Views Snapped Up On Former Foreshore Eyesore

Sydney Morning Herald

Thursday March 5, 1998

By PAOLA TOTARO Urban Affairs Writer

It will cost $250 million, with $10 million for landscaping alone. The gardens will feature a prairie and an olive grove, and it's taking shape on one of the last undeveloped foreshore areas within cooee of the bridge - the old AGL gasworks site at Wollstonecraft Bay.

The Wondakiah development, on a site as big as 16 football fields, will include 297 waterside apartments, a cafe and restaurant, four all-weather tennis courts and three giant pools.

The gardens will also feature a 20 metre waterfall, 700 newly-planted mature trees and 20,000 plants and shrubs.

More than 90 per cent of the first stage of the development has already been sold. Prices range from $375,000 for two-bedroom apartments to $2.3 million for 350-square-metre penthouses.

Wondakiah is being developed by the Sydney-based Kyko Group, which also built Serene Cove, a waterside development at Darling Point, and Citadel Towers at Chatswood.

An on-site labour force of more than 500 men are building an average of one floor every 10 days with 34,000 cubic metres of dirt excavated and almost 10,000 square metres of scaffolding erected on the formerly derelict site.

The residential estate will comprise 11 buildings, some up to 10 storeys. Construction is expected to take three years, with the first stage complete by October this year.

In the next few months, landscaping - designed by Pittendrigh Shinkfield & Bruce - will begin in earnest, including a re-creation of a valley stream along the 31 metre drop to the waterfront.

Many of the trees and shrubs needed for the site, including palms, magnolias, figs and meadow flowers, are being trucked from Victoria and Queensland as there was not enough stock in NSW to fill the order.

The grasslands will feature two types of prairie grass, one tall and one short species, which will be planted in ribbon bands, mimicking the sway of a wheat field. Aesthetics aside, the designers argue that it only needs to be mowed once a year while local rainfall is enough to replenish the grasses without the need for irrigation.

The 20 metre waterfall will drop between two apartment buildings and is designed to camouflage a three-storey resident carpark. However deadening the sound of crashing water has also been the subject of engineering works and 10 tiers with special edges have been designed to help the water "adhere" rather than tumble.

The Wollstonecraft Bay site was originally part of a big land grant to the merchant Edward Wollstonecraft in 1825. It passed to his friend and business partner Alexander Berry on Wollstonecraft's death in 1832 while industrial use began in 1857 with a sugar refinery and distillery.

From 1865 to 1906, the area played host to a variety of industrial uses including kerosene production, coal refining and gunpowder production. It was acquired by the North Shore Gas Company in 1906, and gas production began in 1917.

The site was abandoned in 1983 once natural gas conversion work was completed. The 80-year-old brick chimney and two other heritage-listed buildings are being incorporated into the development.

© 1998 Sydney Morning Herald

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