In two months, Sydney will mark a major anniversary: 10 years since the city’s iconic monorail was ripped up, deemed no longer worth maintaining. But a decade later, relics still remain – notably the abandoned station at the Market Street entrance to Darling Harbour.
Despite numerous thought bubbles over the years, the shell just sits there, unloved and unused.
Marketing and design consultant Andrew Hoyne sees these kinds of places everywhere he goes in Sydney. Dead, dark and damned, they occupy prime pieces of real estate but are woefully underutilised.
In the upcoming third volume of his book series The Place Economy, Hoyne reimagines three such spaces in walking distance of his CBD office – the old monorail station, a Pitt Street smoko alcove and the much-maligned Goulburn Street Car Park.
“All three I find annoying,” says Hoyne. “Without very much effort I could give you a list of about 50. There is an enormous number of assets throughout Sydney that could be put to greater use.”
In his impressions, Hoyne has added a cafe and an espresso bar to the Pitt Street alcove, both with dual level seating. He has turned the Goulburn Street Car Park rooftop into an elevated oasis of outdoor activity, replete with a bike track, skate park, basketball court and hawkers’ market.
“It’s surrounded by many tall towers of residential apartments; [they] have to stare down at this depressing environment, which is empty at night and empty on weekends,” he says of the car park.
Meanwhile, Hoyne has envisioned the derelict monorail station as a bar. “It’s in one of the highest traffic pedestrian locations in all of Australia,” he says. “It has got views over the water, views back to the city. I’m convinced that this is a place that would be busy on a Monday night in winter.”
Hoyne says these underused spaces often stem from the owners’ indifference as to the public role their private assets can play, especially in a busy city centre, or a failure of industry and government to knock heads together and work out a way to improve amenity for everybody.
The Pitt Street space is the entrance to the Telstra Exchange, while the monorail station is owned by Placemaking NSW and is slated for demolition once a long-planned redevelopment of Cockle Bay Wharf eventually begins. Secure Parking runs the car park.
Hoyne is a part owner of Marrickville craft brewery Willie the Boatman and had grand visions of turning the monorail station into an outpost of that operation. He says he contacted government agencies about the idea but “nobody was interested even talking to us”.
The monorail relics have been in the too-hard basket for years; a product of inter-governmental bickering. In 2021, hotelier Jerry Schwartz suggested the abandoned station on Liverpool Street adjoining Rydges could be turned into a bar – or even a giant fish tank.
At the time, City of Sydney chief executive Monica Barone said the monorail leftovers “drive us crazy”. “It is not ours and it should never have been ours,” she said.
Contacted for this story, the council said it had never met Hoyne nor had any contact with him regarding the three sites in the book, due to be published in May.
Andrew Hoyne is about to release the third volume of his book series The Place Economy.Credit: Domain
Transport for NSW said the monorail station was now in poor condition, and would be removed as part of the redesign of Cockle Bay Wharf and the surrounding public domain. The concept design was approved in 2019 but the stage 2 development application is still winding its way through the planning system and remains some way off.
Telstra sold the Pitt Street building to Charter Hall in 2020 but remains the tenant. “Telstra continues to explore ways to better utilise our portfolio assets and we would always consider approaches of this kind carefully,” the telco said in a statement.
Hoyne said cities such as Berlin, Copenhagen, Washington and London had been more innovative and proactive in repurposing public places that people assumed had no value.
“They’ve turned what would traditionally be considered dark and dangerous spaces into dynamic destinations,” he said. “And they’ve all been revenue positive, meaning the cost is outweighed by the revenue being generated.”
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