I hope that the street layout will be random.

I've seent the envolope model of the site in the NSW Building Department on Bridge Street and the whole site seems to be made of simple squarish blocks which don't connect properly into the streets of Chippendale and Broadway and Jones St in Ultimo. I've been hoping that there would be a more imaginative system of streets which would reflect the random layout of streets in Chippendale.

I remember seeing some of the original concept plans and two of the models and plans incorporated a long bending apartment building that integrated Jones St into Balfour St and provided the central park/square of the entire development.

The current building blocks are boring and the park doesn't look as if its the focal point of the development - kind of tucked out the back. Is the current street plan final for the development?

^ It's all limited by the retention of heritage buildings, many of which will be kept.

I had a walk down Kensington st the other day, ie, the st closest to the cbd, and those terraces are like ghetto slums but some seem to be occupied in that condition. Maybe squatters? I never knew that they were owned by CUB or were part of the site. They've always been slummy but were quite lived in so I had assumed that they were public housing.

Back to the heritage thing, I'm guessing that most of the CUB buildings on the other side of the road to the terraces in Kensington St will be kept, ie, an almost non-stop wall of quality looking reusable warehouse going all the way up from Broadway to Regent St (with well placed windows). This will mean that Kensington St will remain quite closed and maybe wouldn't make a nice pedestrian/al fesco st anyway. And even if the terraces got renovated it would still be a dinghy street imo.

i think there is a dozen heritage items to be saved. you can see here on model, the dog shit brown coloured are to be saved. the Kensington st bldgs are all heritage but obscured in this pic

http://img90.imageshack.us/img90/7609/imgp6777vu0.jpg

this aerial shows a better view
http://img110.imageshack.us/img110/3718/cubaerialld1.jpg

But aren't they keeping a lot of the facades aswell that will make up the base of a lot of the buildings in beige?

i dont think so. only whole bldgs and structures. could be wrong