Metro axe hits traders, city square plan
Sydney Morning Herald
Tuesday February 23, 2010
THE cancellation of the CBD Metro has sunk the City of Sydney's plan to create a new square opposite Town Hall by 2015 and prompted scores of city business owners to demand compensation for losses caused by the botched rail plan.The City of Sydney had been negotiating an agreement with the Sydney Metro Authority to build a new square on the south side of Park Street between George and Pitt streets where a metro station was to be constructed underground, but the end of the metro means there is now little prospect of it being constructed for decades.Other casualties of the metro's cancellation are small business owners around abandoned metro station sites at Town Hall and in Castlereagh and Elizabeth streets who are furious the Premier, Kristina Keneally, has decided to "reserve the corridors" for the metro, a decision they say means their businesses will be difficult or impossible to sell.Grace Chang has owned and run the G and P Food Bar in the basement of Park House in Pitt Street for 25 years and said yesterday the uncertainty over whether the building would still be demolished for some future metro would further damage her business. "I just want to cry. They tell us many times the project is definitely going on so my husband has gone to Hong Kong to find a business opportunity there," she said. "They said the project will go on in 2015. It's not fair, they have wrecked the business."The building's owner, Desmond Kong, said he was supposed to exchange contracts last Friday and the collapse of the sale would make it very hard now to rent shops in the building. "It's very hard to lease because people want a long lease," he said.One of his tenants, Thomas So, runs a photographic business which he said was now worth at least less 30 per cent less than it was before the plans for the metro created a sense of uncertainty among clients and anyone interested in buying him out.He wanted compensation for the losses he has suffered already and the costs incurred searching for a new site."This is more damaging that before," Mr So said. " They said they want to keep the corridor, and that uncertainty has left us hanging."It is a similar story in the the centre of Sydney in Castlereagh Street, where Steve Papas, who runs a dry cleaning shop and Harvey Ikladios, a newsagent, say the decision by the Metro Authority to purchase two office buildings as construction sites for a Martin Place station has cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost business.When the metro bought 12 Castlereagh Street and 9-19 Elizabeth Street, most of the business tenants moved out, taking 1000 staff with them."Small businesses like ours rely on the immediate catchment area," Mr Papas said. "When 1000 potential customers disappear that's a huge hit to your turnover."A spokesman for Sydney Metro said the agency had started formally contacting property owners to advise that property negotiations and other contract discussions would need to be halted or finalised "in an appropriate manner". Sydney Metro had bought eight buildings so far and would retain ownership.
© 2010 Sydney Morning Herald
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