Gungahlin town park opened

Gungahlin Al said :

See you guys need to get out of your cars. I said it is a natural ampitheatre, so you aren’t going to see it from the street because it slopes down away from the street towards the stage. And it’s almost all grass.

So it’s in the centre of the school?

What genius came up with that idea?

beejay76 said :

Gungahlin Al said :

Take a stroll Beejay. Corner of Hibberson and Gozzard. No public art yet, but the bunyip should be going in April. The rest looks a treat.

Isn’t that the new college/ library etc? It looks like an enormous mass of paving, not grass and trees. Or is there a green bit further in?

See you guys need to get out of your cars. I said it is a natural ampitheatre, so you aren’t going to see it from the street because it slopes down away from the street towards the stage. And it’s almost all grass.

Gungahlin Al said :

Take a stroll Beejay. Corner of Hibberson and Gozzard. No public art yet, but the bunyip should be going in April. The rest looks a treat.

Isn’t that the new college/ library etc? It looks like an enormous mass of paving, not grass and trees. Or is there a green bit further in?

beejay76 said :

I live a short walk from Hibberson Street. I’ve no idea where this park is. Is there any other park than Linear Park? I’m baffled that I could have missed “a large grass area shaded by trees [with] public art, drinking fountains, seating, public toilets and access to a performance stage area”.

I go down Hibberson Street almost every day and also have never seen this park.

Take a stroll Beejay. Corner of Hibberson and Gozzard. No public art yet, but the bunyip should be going in April. The rest looks a treat.

Keijidosha said :

I’ve seen the new ‘town square’ and it looks like a triumph of persistance and vision over typical Government consultation. (i.e. we’re listening, but we don’t hear you).

I’ve also been to Gungahlin in the depths of winter, and the town centre is a cold, blustery, miserable place. The “main street” vision is commendable, but unsuitable for Canberra’s harsh winters IMO. Hibberson Street in particular is the absolute epitome of poor planning – a point now compounded by the completion of the Fleminton Road duplication. What person(s) in their right mind would try and funnel a dual carriageway into a narrow 40kp/h shared zone? Lunacy.

Cheers. Re: winter, well al fresco in general is a touch and go prospect anywhere in Canberra. But we are working on it, and have in mind that all of Hibberson from Kate Crace to Warwick Street will be a “shared zone”. With wider verges and no kerbing, the opportunities for sheltered outdoor dining and the like open right up.

And a plan for an effective bypass of Hibberson for through traffic is part of that mix. Read about it in the next issue of our newsletter Gungahlin Smokesignals – due in your letterbox next week, and on our website in a day or so.

There are a lot of mistakes, and fixing those we can takes time and lobbying, plus a strong dose of community support for the work we are trying to pull off. But we are just a handful of volunteers. Only with strong support will the ACT Government pay attention to what we are feeding back to them.

I live a short walk from Hibberson Street. I’ve no idea where this park is. Is there any other park than Linear Park? I’m baffled that I could have missed “a large grass area shaded by trees [with] public art, drinking fountains, seating, public toilets and access to a performance stage area”.

I’ve seen the new ‘town square’ and it looks like a triumph of persistance and vision over typical Government consultation. (i.e. we’re listening, but we don’t hear you).

Gungahlin Al said :

With a lot of foresight, Gungahlin was originally founded on the idea of a return to the old “main street” approach for the town centre, rather than the inward-looking mega-shopping-centre-dominated town centres that we have elsewhere in Canberra. Having a great town square caps off that design, and gives our town a new heart..

I’ve also been to Gungahlin in the depths of winter, and the town centre is a cold, blustery, miserable place. The “main street” vision is commendable, but unsuitable for Canberra’s harsh winters IMO. Hibberson Street in particular is the absolute epitome of poor planning – a point now compounded by the completion of the Fleminton Road duplication. What person(s) in their right mind would try and funnel a dual carriageway into a narrow 40kp/h shared zone? Lunacy.

Wrong park Merlin. That’s the linear park.

Good grief. The park has been one disastrous design escapade after another by the Chief Ministers out of control Urban Disservices Department. It has actually been completed for several years and a construction site for much of the time since then. But hey! Why miss the chance for anotehr press release and phot op? At least the Department can look like it is doing something.

Stanhope’s media release on this is spot on. If anything, it doesn’t go far enough. I am quite proud that we in the Gungahlin Community Council have been able to bring about a true “Town Square” for Gungahlin through our work at numerous design meetings and other opportunities for this entire college/library/oval/pool precinct.

The original conceptual layouts from the first consultants evisaged an area located approximately opposite the rear carpark of the Raiders Club that would have been little more that a college/library entry area.

About that time we were smarting after the debacle of the LDA’s design for the “Linear Park” along Gungahlin Place, which major local centre owners have now nicknamed “Gungahlin’s Tianannmen Square” due to the expanse of unusable paving.

I said in these community workshops that we needed a “real” town square that the whole community could use for performances, Christmas carols, markets, and general recreation, and that it needed to address the town centre at the corner of the block, and be clearly legible as a space for everyone rather than just for college students. But it also needed to be built in across the south to block cold southerly winds in winter. It would also give the residents of the apartments over the street a wonderful and engaging outlook rather than 2/3 storey walls, plus leverage their casual surveillance to monitor behaviour in the park – rather than having an area that would have been largely concealed from the street by buildings on three sides.

The plans were turned around, and we now have a wonderful town square, with a natural ampitheatre bowl for performances. Conrad the architect harnessed the idea and designed the college layout with the whole arts section located so that the performing arts classes could open out onto the main stage for both internal use and external performances.

We also got them to install all the necessary wiring from the stage area to the top of the park, so sound engineers can easily set up systems without having cabling strung across the park. And we emphasised the slow growth of the existing street trees, and therefore the need to ensure that stormwater from the streets automatically watered the trees every time it rains.

With a lot of foresight, Gungahlin was originally founded on the idea of a return to the old “main street” approach for the town centre, rather than the inward-looking mega-shopping-centre-dominated town centres that we have elsewhere in Canberra. Having a great town square caps off that design, and gives our town a new heart.

If you haven’t been to Gungahlin in a while (or at all) and find your thoughts have been coloured by the (in some but definitely not all cases deserved) criticisms of poor suburban design, I recommend you “do yourself a favour” and come visit the Gungahlin town centre. You may be surprised.