How Olympic Park became trapped between sporting legacy and reinvention | Mattonews
A chief gripe is a sense of vast emptiness. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, an absence of people on weekdays was striking. Now, a walk along Olympic Boulevard leaves you wondering where everyone disappeared to.
"We did get our spurs on. In fact, we finished all of the facilities that were promised in the '93 Olympic bid 12 months before [the Games began]," says Richmond, who went on to become the inaugural chairman of the Sydney Olympic Park Authority in 2001 for six years. "Sydney not only delivered in 2000 a fabulous Olympics and Paralympics but we have delivered the best Olympic Park or set of Olympic facilities.
Professor James Weirick was highly critical of plans for the Olympic precinct in the lead up to the 2000 Games.Weirick, a professor in urban development and design at the University of NSW, says Sydney faces problems similar to most Olympic cities, apart from the likes of Munich. The German city was widely regarded as setting the gold standard last century in how to host the Games.
Yet even critics of Olympic Park's evolution readily highlight the Games' valuable legacies. Top of the list are its parklands, the jewels in the crown covering 430 hectares. They help draw more than 10 million people every year to Olympic Park. Similarly, the solar-powered suburb of Newington near the western fringe, which was born out of the Athletes Village, earns praise two decades on for its cutting-edge environmental systems.
The loop line worked a treat for the Olympics and has for other major events since. But architect and City of Sydney councillor Philip Thalis says the loop line is not the long-term solution for a precinct whose transport links have been its Achilles heel due to its location on a peninsula. "It's great for events but it just doesn't work as a daily service," he says. "Transport is its huge limitation and it hasn't been able to be solved in any comprehensive way.
"There were road design concepts that were in vogue 25 years ago that are not in vogue now," he says. "Trying to create more of a traditional grid system would provide better access and having short, walkable blocks towards the core would make it more interesting. Everything comes back to transport and place making. It needs a bit of grunge."While people flock to the parklands, the 640-hectare precinct has been struggling to attract businesses for a number of years.
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