MAKE YOUR STREET HISTORY

The Fremantle Society will be doing some great events during this year’s FREMANTLE HERITAGE FESTIVAL, which will start later this month. Here is one for you all to participate in!

A N O T H E R  B R I C K  I N  T H E W A L L.

     Tell us the story of your street

 * How long have you lived in your street and in your house?

* How many kids and pets live there?

* How old is your house. Did you built it yourself?

* Who is your street named after. Are/were their shops?

* Who are your neighbours. Are they Australian or immigrants?

* What is the history of your street. Who lived there before you?

* What hobbies do your neighbours have. What is their favourite food?

* Do famous people live in your street?

Record the stories of the locals as they reminisce about the simple deeds and happenings in the street. Who were the famous people of your street and what were their exploits. Who lived in the house across the street for all those years. What are the stories of the people who have come from across the seas to share and grow with us. Which are the heritage houses in your area. Record it all.

It’s your exhibition of the heritage of where you live and the people who live around you. A construction narrative held during the festival that is literally creating a wall of information.

Collect the information in a simple written form, pictures or news clippings and glue them onto the fours sides of a cardboard box, a brick. Make as many bricks as you like. The more the better!

Bring your bricks to the Queensgate Mall that runs from William Street to MYER on Sunday May 27 between 11-1 and we will build a wall of local history with them, for all to see during the Fremantle Heritage Festival. The wall will be on display until the 30^th of May. 5pm.

Any questions? Call Roel Loopers on 0419 850981

 Please let us know that you will participate by emailing: roel@profilephoto.com.au

 

 

A GOOD IDEA FOR FREMANTLE

Fremantle is the city of bicycles and arty people, so when I received this BLIPFOTO taken by Chris Orrell, I thought how good a wall like this would look in our city.

The photo was taking in the cafe and restaurant district of Adliya in Bahrain, during the month long Bohemian Alwan Art Festival. Alwan means colour.

During the month long festival the whole district is turned into an open art exhibition space with art in every corner. I think we should consider doing a kind of open art festival like that in Freo. It would go well here.

Roel Loopers

Photo by Chris Orrell

FREO’S MASTER SCULPTOR AT WORK

It is not often that the public can watch artists at work, so when well known Fremantle sculptor Greg James invited people to come and watch the bronze pour for his sculpture Iris, many turned up at the J Shed on Saturday to watch the fascinating process.

Iris will be installed in Ord Street once she is ready.

Roel Loopers

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FREO’S WAY OF LIFE IMPORTANT TO NEW DEVELOPMENT

Maybe the City of Fremantle could take note of this, especially read the part I have made in bold:

Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) Deputy Governor Wallop Suwandee received the Asian Township Award at Japan’s United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT) Fukuoka Office.

Such prizes are organised by the Fukuoka Office together with related Japanese agencies under the theme “Living Environment and Urban Revival”, awarding a town/city or a pilot project that lifts the quality of life of its people along with an environmental development.

The criteria for winning the award includes promotion of life safety, the importance to art and culture, correlation between the town’s landscape and its people’s way of life, the town’s creative projects, and being a pilot scheme for other cities in the future.

Bangkok presented itself with the project of ‘The Living Bangkok Heritage’. It was a development project with tangible conservation outcomes on four selected areas of old town Rattanakosin Island–Plabpla Maha Jetsadabodin Ground, Santichaiprakarn Park, Nakarapirom Park, and Sanam Luang Ceremonial Ground.

ALL NEW FREO CYCLE CHIC

Freo Cycle Chic is a new Fremantle community initiative to get more people on their bikes. Cycle chic started in Copenhagen five years ago and is popular in Europe.

To get public awareness for the movement,  Freo Cycle Chic is organising two events in Fremantle in March, starting with a progressive bicycle dinner on the 22nd. There will be sunset Tapas in South Fremantle and from there it’s on the bikes for dinner at Little Creatures. Bookings are essential! Email freocyclechic@gmail.com

The second event is twilight event Reclaim The Bike on March 23 at Kings Square with the outdoor screening of the movie Beauty and the Bike.

Check out the website for details and more information: www.freocyclechic.org

Roel Loopers

FREO’S ALFRESCO MAYOR

Fremantle Mayor Brad Pettitt might well be Australia’s first alfresco mayor, with the start of the Mayor in the Square initiative, which started today. Sitting at one of the colourful tables at Kings Square, with a kettle and cups, the mayor met with Freo residents who wanted to raise issues with him. Quite a few turned up and waited patiently in the heat to get their turn. It was relaxed and amicable, and is a  good idea.

Roel Loopers

TRAIN WHEEL SQUEAL UPROAR

Container traffic to and from Fremantle Ports is becoming a major headache  at both ends of Fremantle. In the east the Road2Rail campaigners want less container trucks on Leach and Stirling Highway, while in the west end of town residents are now so desperate that they are seriously considering legal action to stop the “wheel squeal”.

People living near the rail line opposite the Round House claim to have sleep interrupted nights, with trains coming through as late as 1am and as early as 5 am. They say people sleep with ear protection to try to get a good night’s sleep. It is impossible to listen to the television when trains come through because of the noise they make. The wheel squeal can be heard as far as the Town Hall when westerly winds blow, and tests have shown them to be well above acceptable noise levels, which indicates the noise is a health hazard.

It is hard to see any fast and easy solutions for the problem, as the answer probably is to build a new rail line, which is very costly and time consuming.

Forget the noise for a while and look at the beauty of the west end. I shot this photo on my way home around sunset yesterday, after I went to the scheme amendment info session at the council.

Roel Loopers

BUILD NOTRE DAME STUDENTS FREO HOMES

The Western Suburbs community newspaper reports that the University of Western Australia will built and extra 515 student flats. They will be self-catering apartments rented to the students at below-market prices.

I wonder if the University of Notre Dame has any plans to build student accommodation in Fremantle and how many students presently live in Freo. Witnessing the exodus of students each afternoon by train and car, I doubt many stay in town, hence the ghost town the West End of Fremantle is after uni hours.

Is there any dialogue between the City of Fremantle and UNDA to supply student accommodation in the future?

On that note, it is interesting to see that the Memorandum of Understanding between the City of Fremantle and Sirona Capital on the development of Kings Square, does not mention residential use at all! It states “a strategic objective of Fremantle is to achieve increased commercial and retail activity in and around the properties.” It also mentions a possible hotel on one of the sites.

If the City is serious about getting up to 7000 more people living in the inner city, Kings Square should also have residential use, and student accommodation in the inner city must be considered a priority.

Office and retail space alone  will do nothing to increase vibrancy in the city after business hours. It is more likely going to increase the numbers of people leaving the city after business and uni hours, which already has created an empty, boring West End in the evenings and on weekends.

Roel Loopers

WHO ARE SIRONA CAPITAL?

The announcement by Fremantle Mayor Brad Pettitt yesterday that the City intends to sign a Memorandum Of Understanding (MOU) to do the entire redevelopment of King’s Square with just one developer, Sirona Capital, made me want to know who that company is and what their record at property development is.

The website of Sirona states that they are “Trusted advisors and investment partners to the mining, resources and Real Estate sector” and that they see themselves as providers of independent corporate financial advise and capital solutions to their clients. Sirona also writes that they are deeply committed to the Australian Real Estate sector looking for investment opportunities across the entire real estate project lifecycle.

Sirona‘s office is in West Perth, where many resources companies have their offices, at 7 Havelock Street. I cannot find photos or plans of any large property development they might have been involved in, so from what I know now they are mainly going to be the providers of capital for the King’s Square development. Who are the partners who are going to design and build all these exceptional buildings we want in Fremantle’s major square?

Roel Loopers

FREO’s FUTURE LOOK?

Together with my designer friend Michael Adeane we created a mock up of what the Fremantle Woolstores shopping centre could look like if a nine storey building was build there. As you can see it would create quite a different feel in the inner city.

My personal concerns with this is not necessary height alone. I am more concerned about the bulk of a development there, with the Woolstores site running approximately 200 metres along Elder Place and Cantonment Street and 100 metres building frontage at Queen Street. In your mind just multiply the building in this mock-up several times, to get an idea how massive such development would be. All that just opposite the heritage railway station.

Councillor Andrew Sullivan talks about having an iconic building on that site, and that is not necessarily bad, but if the whole site would be up to nine storeys high it would be absolutely enormous. If you add to that another 100×100 metres available at the old Marilyn New Woolstore site as well, along the same streets, you are considerably changing the appeal and human scale of Fremantle. It would have a very big impact on the inner city.

If indeed a multi storeys hopping centre would be build on what now is the low rise shopping centre, who will guarantee it will not look like the awful one built in Claremont, where driving on Gugeri Road makes you feel you are looking at a high bunker. It is very ugly!  Can we prevent that from happening in Fremantle, or will the mighty developers’ dollar speak louder than the good intentions of the council?

It is essential that we all take part in the community consultation process that is still weeks away!

Roel Loopers

P.S. It was suggested to me that we should super impose Johnson Court on the Woolstores site, but I don’t believe engaging in spin is right, and no one at the City of Fremantle is proposing to build Johnson Court style buildings. The multy storey building  in this photo was built in the last few years at South Beach.