40-storey skyscrapers: If Sydney’s military barracks are to be sold off, what would replace them?

6 hours ago 2

Sydney’s former deputy lord mayor painted a picture of locals sitting in the sun sipping on Aperol Spritzes in a new vision of life in Paddington if the Defence department goes ahead with plans to sell off Victoria Barracks and turn it into a mix of housing and public space.

But like so many things in Sydney, visions of the future depend on what side of the city you’re on.

An aerial photograph of the Victoria Barracks in Paddington, Sydney.

In Sydney’s west, the Lancer Barracks, just off Parramatta Square, are being pushed to be sold off and opened up for public space by local business and council leaders – but the volunteers at the museum featuring local military history have made a promise: “We will fight to the death to keep Lancer Barracks,” John Howells, a volunteer who runs the museum, said.

A fight might be what is required. This masthead reported on Friday that the federal government was planning to announce the sell-off of several military sites across the country, potentially handing the Albanese government billions of dollars.

Defence Minister Richard Marles told parliament there were “a number of properties within the defence estate that really have their history ... as being part of something in the past and not necessarily focused on the future”.

But local debates rage about what, if anything, Sydney’s defence barracks should be turned into. Are they remnants of a past military age, ready to be torn down or opened up for housing and public access, or should they be preserved forever as heritage items, reminders of what once was?

The city’s most eager housing advocates say most should be opened for housing.

In Paddington, where residents have previously complained about the design of public toilets and climate change-related puppet shows, the Victoria Barracks could be home to “40-storey skyscrapers with some parkland and a public housing component to inject diversity into the suburb,” Justin Simon, the chair of housing advocacy group Sydney YIMBY, recently said.

“Paddington has only built 24 dwellings since the 2011 census because the whole suburb is covered by heritage conservation. We think this is a unique opportunity.”

Even Clover Moore, cautious on the state’s new housing push, said affordable housing was an option for the area.

“If the site is no longer required for ADF purposes, this land could provide significant additional benefit,” she said on Friday. “It is not often such a significant amount of inner city land becomes available so any change in use would have to involve community consultation, but increased access to parkland, new cultural infrastructure and affordable housing come to mind.”

But like many locals, Moore highlights the significant heritage on the site. “A key consideration for any future use is how to fund the ongoing maintenance of its historic buildings and the site.”

The council has taken submissions on potential future uses, and a draft vision for the site will be made public late this year or early next year.

But on the other side of the city, the Lancer Barracks, directly opposite Parramatta Station, represent not so much an opportunity for more housing – but green space.

The site is opened by museum volunteers for only a few hours on rare Sundays afternoons, but Business Western Sydney boss David Borger is pushing for it to become open space for workers in Parramatta Square to access, extending the public boulevard from St John’s Anglican Cathedral on the western side of the square to the Lancer Barracks in the east.

“I think it’d be great to actually allow the public more access to look at our nation’s history.”

But to open it as public space, Defence would need to work out how to deal with the museum on the site, which its volunteer managers say would be vandalised if it was opened to the public.

“The whole site is a heritage-protected precinct,” Howells, who manages the museum at the barracks, said. It is currently home to about 10 people each day, mainly from the 1st/15th Royal NSW Lancers, plus training regiments from Sydney University and the Australian Catholic University. School students use it for cadet programs on the weekend.

“It is a link to Parramatta’s heritage that basically would be destroyed when you take the military out of it. Its context would disappear.”

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