Sydney’s Mardi Gras season officially kicked off on Friday last week, yet a stroll down Oxford Street this week might suggest otherwise – the northern side of the gay strip had large holes and trenches in the ground and was cluttered with barricades, sand bags, bricks, pipes, forklifts, excavators and skip bins.
The construction work is due to the creation of the City of Sydney’s delayed cycleway and is in addition to hoardings along the same side of the street that are covering up the years-behind-schedule redevelopment of three blocks of buildings, known as the Oxford & Foley project.
While the City of Sydney has pledged to temporarily have Oxford Street free of barricades in time for the Mardi Gras parade, local businesses remain frustrated by the delays and complain about the impact both projects are having on trade during the Mardi Gras season, which goes from February 14 to March 2.
“The broader problem is that people still see Oxford Street as a construction site,” Aran Tanaka Van de Ven, general manager of the Burdekin Hotel on Oxford Street’s northern side, told Gay Sydney News.
“When you’ve got that much scaffolding and hoarding around, it deters people from walking on that side of the street, even if it’s subconsciously. If you see a construction site with scaffolding up, you might not walk under it just in case [it collapses], and so people avoid that.”
Michael Lewis, the venue manager of Palms, on the same side of the street, is equally frustrated by the delays and by being mucked around by the construction company building the cycleway.
Last week he received an email with a notice from the company about nightworks on the corner of Oxford and Crown streets commencing that day, despite the memo being dated four days earlier.
“The announcement … came as [a] very unpleasant surprise,” he told Gay Sydney News on Tuesday last week. “It would have been helpful to have had the notification the day it was drafted.”
While the construction company apologised for not sending the notice when it was created and dated, Lewis said the latest disruptions to foot traffic and access to Palms seemed “engineered to inflict maximum damage on the few remaining viable businesses on Oxford Street”.
“We are devastated for the other struggling small businesses on Oxford Street, as this may be the straw that breaks the camel’s back for many.”
Due to the works, Lewis said Palms would be forced to close on Tuesdays until further notice because the level of disruption now made trading untenable. “More days may need to be reviewed as the foot traffic impacts become apparent, however; if we can manage to hold out, we will,” he said.
Weather permitting, the construction company has told local businesses that the nightworks will continue until February 27 – just two days before the Mardi Gras parade. The work includes road pavement excavation and stormwater drainage installation, with temporary lane closures and noise impacts.
With rain on Friday and possible showers forecast for Saturday, as well as a medium chance of showers expected on Tuesday, it will be a race against time to complete the works for the parade.
During a walk down Oxford Street on Friday afternoon as it was raining, Gay Sydney News witnessed a forklift and multiple construction workers still working away on the cycleway.
A City of Sydney spokesperson promised that while construction of the cycleway would not be complete in time for the parade, the contractor building it would “shut down operations and remove all barricades, construction equipment, and make the area safe” ahead of the march.
“We will then resume construction and expect to complete the project in mid-2025, weather and other conditions permitting,” the spokesperson said.
City of Sydney Deputy Lord Mayor Zann Maxwell told Gay Sydney News he had been assured by Lord Mayor Clover Moore’s office that there would be “no holes in the ground” for the parade.
“This parade has been a fixture of Oxford Street for decades. It’s too important to the community, to businesses, and to the city’s economy for anything to go wrong,” he said.
“If it does, there’ll be serious questions to answer.”
Maxwell said that the City of Sydney would be footing the bill for a temporary resurfacing of the road for the parade. This typically includes applying a temporary layer of material, such as asphalt, to the existing road surface before completing the works, after which the area will be fully resurfaced.
“The alternative – delaying the works – would have pushed the project back even further and triggered costly prolongation costs from the contractors,” he said.
Maxwell linked the cycleway construction delays back to the $200 million Oxford & Foley development, which was meant to be completed in 2023.
“The cycleway was originally set to be completed before this Mardi Gras, but that became impossible after the Oxford & Foley development was thrown into chaos,” Maxwell said.
“The problems [with that development] – collapsed walls, asbestos discoveries, and developer changes to the design mid-project – delayed access to key sections of the street, which in turn pushed back the cycleway works.”
Maxwell said he understood why people were sceptical of the project given that Oxford Street’s “renaissance” had been promised for years.
“Oxford Street has been in a state of construction or decline for years, and the City’s track record of delivering for this precinct hasn’t always been great,” he said.
“But I’ve been told this [the removal of cycleway construction equipment and barricades] will be ready [in time for the parade], and I’ll be watching closely to make sure that promise is kept.”
The Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras organisation said its parade operations team had been working closely with the City of Sydney and all relevant authorities for many months to ensure a smooth parade.
TOGA group, the company behind the Oxford and Foley development, did not respond to a request for comment.
Gay Sydney News reporter
Gay Sydney News editor
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