The Sale Of The Powerhouse Museum Is The Latest Move In An Ugly Trend For Sydney

[Update, April 12 2016]: The site of the new Powerhouse Museum has this week been announced as a former David Jones carpark by the Parramatta River. This is a move which is welcomed by the local community and both sides of state politics; it’s a huge boon for the area and the new venue has been touted to be Australia’s answer to the Smithsonian.

However, after much protest, questions remain unanswered about the museum’s current inner-city site. Fairfax report that NSW Premier Mike Baird has refused to guarantee it will still be used for cultural or community facilities. It’s expected to be sold to developers and turned into apartment buildings. All this comes despite a recent open letter from more than 170 prominent people in the arts and wider community (including Cate Blanchett, former premier Bob Carr) pleading with the government to reconsider. 

Here’s a reminder of what they’re fighting for:

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From shuffling around the drunk young people  to selling some of the nicest views in the city to a bloody casino, to kicking some very sweet old ladies out of their homes, the NSW government has done a lot to mess with Sydney’s good vibes lately.

The latest move in Premiere Mike Baird’s concerted attempt to win Sydney the Prettiest Backdrop/Shittiest City award was announced last Friday: the sale of the Powerhouse Museum.

It’s hoped the iconic site (a beautiful building in a city that, let’s be real here, is comparatively short on nice architecture) can be shilled for roughly $200million. The actual sale price will be determined by how much freedom developers are given with the land — how high they can build new apartments, basically.

The money will be used to build a bigger, better Powerhouse Museum (which Fairfax reckons won’t actually be called The Powerhouse anymore) in Sydney’s Western Suburbs.

That part of the plan isn’t such a bad idea. No one is arguing that Parramatta’s cultural life is anything other than deserving and under-served. But the rest of the plan is the kind of short-sighted metropolis-ruiner that, despite our very lovely Harbour, will prevent Sydney from ever feeling like a truly great global city. Having the centrality of location and population density to support large cultural institutions is kind of the point of city centres, right?

Our Inner City Needs Its Powerhouse

When New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) joined forces with Long Island City’s PS1 in the early 2000s, they didn’t shut down their Manhattan site to do it. The PS1 is much, much bigger than the Manhattan site, but that doesn’t mean the original museum is any less valuable. By having two sites, the value of both locations is increased.

Sure, the Powerhouse isn’t exactly MOMA. But last year, over 380,000 visitors streamed through its doors, and the tactile experience the museum offers kids is invaluable. The Powerhouse is filled with wheels to spin and cloth to touch a life sized space shuttle to wander through and even a machine that gives off smells.

The broad remit of The Powerhouse makes it a boon for geeks too — where else but a Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences could hold an exhibition dedicated to video games or Harry Potter?

Remember THIS?

Then, there’s the Powerhouse’s use as a design resource. If you enjoy Australian design — be it fashion, industrial or interior — then you should care about keeping the Powerhouse put. In the belly of the building are incredible archives, with papers and artifacts from the likes of Gordan Andrews and Jenny Kee. This comprehensive history of Australian aesthetics is conveniently located right next to UTS and Ultimo TAFE. The places where the designers of the future are studying right now. Forcing students, plenty of whom live out of town in the north and south of Sydney, as well as the west, to traipse all the way to Parramatta to get their fix of history just doesn’t seem reasonable.

As an institution that looks at life through the lenses of design and technology, the Powerhouse is a great place to spot a trend. Even its sale is part of a trend — a very ugly one.

Don’t Ask Us; Ask The Lord Mayor

The Powerhouse is heritage listed — and The City of Sydney, under the mayorship of Clover Moore, is generally pretty respectful of heritage listed buildings. But the sale of The Powerhouse is a state government decision, and the state government is happy to put the short term interests of property developers ahead of either of those things.

So how do you hock a heritage listed museum? Well, you use something called the State Significant Development process to bypass the say that the City might otherwise have. If the sale is made, it will be handled by NSW Government Property, who are basically the Government’s real estate agents. This is what it looks like when they’re selling off land. So who is in the position to buy something as expensive as The Powerhouse? Most likely international investors. It will be down to the potential purchaser of the site to pick a developer.

And in this case, the mayor isn’t happy about it.

“The NSW Government claims it must sell off the purpose-built Powerhouse Museum of Science and Design to create a museum in Western Sydney,” Lord Mayor Clover Moore told Junkee. “This seems like cynical politics designed to pit Sydneysiders against one another.

“Sydney’s inner city should not have to lose something before Western Sydney can gain something. The Powerhouse Museum site in Ultimo is a precious, publicly-owned asset and it should not be sold off for short-term financial gain.

“The Powerhouse Museum is not only important to Sydney’s history; it is also part of its future.”

So What Can We Do About It?

The Powerhouse isn’t for sale yet. Which means that no one can petition the City or the State to stop the sale, yet. But if the idea of the city centre haemorrhaging cultural life in favour of big business is something that doesn’t appeal to you, and you’re a City of Sydney resident, you can ask the City to reassess the heritage status of the Powerhouse under the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act. If the Powerhouse’s current use as a museum is deemed important to its heritage, then it’ll be a much bigger headache for that usage to be changed.

If you’re not a City of Sydney resident, but do live in NSW, then read about the other intensely shady things the State Government is doing, and have a long, hard think about who you want to vote for in the upcoming election. Ask your friends and family in Western Sydney to think about it too — there’s no doubt they deserve a museum, but they also deserve a government whose interest in the cultural lives of its citizens is a little more thought out than robbing from Pyrmont to pay Parramatta.

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Sarah Lacey is a writer based in Sydney.