White Bay RFP a flawed process

White Bay RFP a flawed processThe Baird Government’s decision to reject all 13 private sector proposals for the historic White Bay precinct in inner Sydney suggests a systemic planning failure, says Property Council executive director Jane Fitzgerald.The government plans to turn the power station, which closed in 1983, into a high-tech hub. Premier Mike Baird has said the aim is to create the “best technology precinct in the world”. A Request for Proposals for the 10ha site was issued last year, with Baird saying the government was “looking for a partnership with the private sector”.Now, the site will be broken up into smaller parcels of land in a staged development – a decision that Fitzgerald says is “concerning”.”This is the second time an RFP process has been shut down by the NSW Government, the first being Central Barangaroo,” she says.”The government needs to think carefully about what is going wrong with its large-scale master planning tasks because it’s the private sector that is paying for the failure.”UrbanGrowth NSW will now manage the site. Chairman John Brogden has said that the “private sector proposals relied too heavily on residential development to fund decontamination of the power station, and doing so would have changed the nature of the site.”However, many in the industry have criticised the process as “flawed”, citing no clear direction for the site and a business case that doesn’t stack up. Michael Cannon Brookes snr, a business leader who set up Citibank, was IBM’s vice president of global strategy for growth markets for many years, and whose son founded Atlassian, has publicly stated that White Bay “will never succeed” because technology start-ups “don’t want to pay what it costs for harbour views”.The Opposition is also questioning the process, with planning spokesman Michael Daley arguing the government’s decision is “completely bizarre”.”The government seems to have changed its mind on its preferred model halfway through the tender process, but still put the tenderers to the expense of finalising their proposals. It all seems quite bizarre, and at any event, it’s just a shemozzle.”