Katoomba Charrette Outcomes Report - Blue Mountains City Council

Katoomba Charrette Report & Town Centre Strategy
Public Courtyard Between Cultural/Visitors Centre and the Carrington
The space between the Centre and the Carrington, comprised of Froma Lane and the
Carrington’s present car park, would hopefully become a sunny, sheltered high quality outdoor
urban space, as illustrated in the sketch above. While vehicular traffic should definitely still
pass through this space in order to connect at least with College Lane (if not into the
Carrington Lawn), this urban space should be devoted primarily to gathering rather than car
parking.
The present new car park for the Carrington would not contribute, in its present state, to such
a high quality urban space. In order to reduce the amount of car parking in that area, either
other spaces would need to be found on the Carrington property, or else perhaps an
arrangement could be made with the Cultural/Visitors Centre for some limited but dedicated
Carrington car parking, or perhaps the parking requirement might be reduced. Furthermore,
the present car park drains to the west, which has forced the eastern end to be raised with a
retaining wall at its southeast corner. This condition is not conducive to the priority of
pedestrian access from the proposed Cultural/Visitors Centre out to the Carrington Lawn and
to Katoomba Street, or to Katoomba Street via improvements to the Clarendon shops property
to the south of the Carrington’s lawn. Hopefully these difficulties can be resolved through
cooperation between the Carrington, the Clarendon shops ownership (John Lekkus), BMCC and
the Cultural/Visitors Centre proponents.
Additional Cultural Facilities Nearby as Part of the Experience
Along with the Carrington across Froma Lane, a private Contemporary Art Gallery is proposed
for a new building behind the Clarendon Shops to the east, on John Lekkus’ property (see
Subsection 10.3). Hopefully visitors and locals alike would be drawn further east to Katoomba
Street and the Savoy Performing Arts Centre, and to the west across Parke Street to the New
TAFE Arts Centre (see Section 10.5).
Need for Large Ca Parking Capacity and Tourist Coach Drop-off and Parking
As explained in Section 8.2.3 on car parking, the Charrette recognised that a large visitor
parking capacity will be needed to optimise the public transport linkage between the Town
Centre and Echo Point, by means of inducing cars and coaches to stop in the Town Centre first,
and then for visitors to take the bus to Echo Point and back (or walk). The Charrette estimated
that about 300 spaces might be needed for this purpose. Any additional complementary uses
in the Cultural/Visitors Centre, as mentioned above, would also need some additional parking
capacity on the site. However, peak demands for the various uses will hopefully not all
coincide, so that the shared parking capacity can serve respective parking demands at different
times, thereby requiring fewer total spaces.
The Old TAFE site, especially if assembled with properties to its south, was big enough
potentially for a larger parking structure, associated with the Visitors Centre, along with other
users of the parking capacity. The RTA Building just south of the Old TAFE property is owned
by the State, and would hopefully become part of this project, as well. When approached by
the Charrette Team, Jane Young, owner of the building housing Civic Video and Retrovision to
the south of the RTA Building, expressed verbal willingness in principle to consider a joint
venture or sale of the property, that would effectively join these properties to enable a larger
development (see indicative design option C below).
The combined sites generally slope enough for access to underground parking without
expensive and space-hungry internal ramps.
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