Ultimo has developed a vibrant community gathering place on the Quarry Green – a pedestrian park at the crossover of Bulwara Road with Quarry Street. With their small-sized inner-city dwellings that lack their own backyards, most locals socialise in this public space, known affectionately as “our lounge room”.
Recently, the City of Sydney’s relevant committee heard the cries of the community and formally rescinded the permit for the work zone on Bulwara Road. This was a short-lived respite from the battle. Local community groups are now outraged by the developer seeking to get the work zone back via an amended development application.
A local community representative put it this way: “This is outrageous and unacceptable. Our community has already endured 11 hours of daily dust, noise and discomfort for over a year. Now this … company wants to punish us for even longer, while trying a sneaky ‘backdoor’ method to acquire the work zone they so desperately want – but don’t need.”
The tactics of the developer make it clear that the company will pursue every option in the hope of exhausting local opposition. They do not seem to understand that the locals are not going away.
Another community leader expressed it this way: “What they have perhaps failed to take into consideration is that the local community lives in and around Bulwara Road. The developer may want to use Bulwara Road to expedite the work and maximise profit, but we live here! And by that I mean our homes are along Bulwara Road, we walk along Bulwara Road, we meet one another along Bulwara Road, we socialise along Bulwara Road. This is where we live.”
So far, the tussle over the work zone application has been conducted cordially. But neither developer nor local community members appear to be backing down.
