Developer Alceon Group has work well under way demolishing the old Myer building other than the Summer Street and Post Office Lane facades.
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A new portal frame and roof will be built behind the facades for separate retail outlets and a food hall.
Scaffolding and a timber wall blocks off the building, but people would love to see what’s going on inside on the Summer Street footpath side and would welcome some construction site peepholes like most Sydney worksites always had.
They’re one of the most basic ways people can at least see what’s happening behind the barriers.
In New York it’s compulsory for developers to install peepholes so people can peek at the work, and it would be a bonus if we could see what’s going on inside Myer.
There’s also a timber wall on the Anson Street footpath side that looks ideal for a peephole, although the council probably has some obscure regulation to stop that happening.
Sydney people now have viewing windows at the under-construction Cherrybrook and Norwest railway stations as part of the Sydney Metro North West rail link so that locals can see work at the two tunnelling sites.
In New York it’s compulsory for developers to install peepholes so people can peek at the work, and it would be a bonus if we could see what’s going on inside Myer.
We could add the new Quest building in Kite Street to the list.
USER-PAYS SCHEME FOR THOSE IN THE FAST LANE
WHILE Labor wants to tax so-called luxury cars, penalising what they see as the ‘big end of town’, the Australian Automobile Association wants the party that wins the federal election to replace fuel excise with user-pays road charges.
The association says motorists will pay almost $60 billion in taxes in the next four years but they’re getting a poor return for their money and expect more.
Just think of the economic benefits if Orange City Council introduced a user-pays traffic scheme.
You could pay to park in rarely-used areas like no-stopping zones, saving you long walks with your shopping bags.
You could even pay a special fee to drive faster than the painfully-slow 50km/h limit on some of our streets like Bathurst Road, Woodward Street and Molong and Forbes roads.
And think just how much faster to get where you’re going if you could buy a dream run through the Summer Street traffic lights by using a special remote that turned them green as soon as you got there?
And you could pay to be protected from our arrogant tailgaters by the council issuing $1000 fines for the city’s coffers if they get closer than three metres behind you. Think of the rewards that would reap and we might get a rates cut.
You could even pay a special fee to drive faster than the painfully-slow 50km/h limit on some of our streets like Bathurst Road, Woodward Street and Molong and Forbes roads.
Surely the fast-lane rich in Orange would love to take advantage of such a scheme.
OVERDUE DASH FOR SAFETY ON SUMMER STREET
PEDESTRIANS are still straggling across Summer Street, and businesses in the bottom block say they’ve often had to help elderly people who have fallen in the middle of the road after scurrying to beat a car.
It’s a good case for the Roads and Maritime Services’ plan to build a fence down the middle of the street to force pedestrians to use marked crossings and not just wander across where they feel like it.
The RMS says pedestrians have limited tolerance if forced to wait for a green light so when there’s a gap in the traffic they just wander across and that‘s risky.
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