This is how Wagga welcomes visitors to its CBD. Photo: Chris Roe.
EXTERIOR – CORNER BLOCK – DAYTIME
A discarded shopping trolley lays on its side next to a broken chair and casts a jagged shadow across weed-cracked concrete in the late afternoon.
Shade-cloth hangs in rags from a chain-link fence, its tattered edges fluttering in the breeze adding the allusion of life to a desolate scene where even the cactus and thistles are struggling to grow.
While it reads like the opening of a new zombie film, it actually describes the entrance to the main street of NSW’s largest inland city.
Ever since Mad Max took a road trip to Silverton in 1981, Broken Hill has been the go-to location for post-apocalyptic movies. But Wagga will soon give the Silver City a run for its money.
Chief among the collection of abandoned eyesores that welcome motorists on the Sturt Highway to Wagga is the desolate hellscape on the corner of Baylis and Edward streets.
The service station that once occupied 7-9 Baylis Street is long gone, leaving only a contaminated, weed-choked eyesore and the fading promise of a glorious new hotel.
It’s rumoured Wagga City Council once looked into putting down a temporary bit of grass and a seat or two on the site, but this sort of thing is frowned upon by developers who can face public backlash when they have to rip up the park to start building.
Larry’s ghost wanders through a wasteland at the top of Baylis Street. Photo: Chris Roe.
Back in 2015, the city was abuzz with speculation that multinational doughnut company Krispy Kreme was on the way to transform the corner into an American-style patisserie.
Corflutes appeared on the fence declaring the franchise was “Coming Soon”. But the claim proved more hollow than a day-old ‘Original Glazed’ and the hoax quickly became apparent.
In 2019 there was renewed hope the eyesore on the city’s most prominent corner would receive a makeover as HTL Property declared a “DA approved 100+ key 4 Star hotel” was on the market.
Plans for a six-storey $15.5 million hotel complex were filed with Wagga City Council by Design Workshop Australia on behalf of the Singaporean-owned CapitaLand Group Australia.
The DA (development application) was approved in April 2020 for a “mixed use development” and there was much excitement. But of course, a lot changed in the hotel game over the next 12 months and, as development stalled across the globe, the block went back on the market.
The now-defunct plans for a glorious 4-star hotel on the corner of Baylis and Edward streets. Photo: HTL Property.
In August 2021, the mysterious Purple Sakura Pty Ltd purchased the property for a tidy $2.2 million along with several other commercial properties on Baylis Street.
Since then, weeds have continued to grow, the fence has sagged and the only “improvement” to the site has been a silhouette of the late Larry Skewes pushing his pram into the wasteland.
It seems new hotels are no longer the go in a post-COVID Wagga with HTL Property confirming “the buyer is not building a hotel”.
It follows the news last month that a portion of the old Murrumbidgee Mill across the road was back up for sale with plans for a Holiday Inn now deemed unlikely.
So what happens now to this “unrivalled Baylis St CBD location” with its “three street frontages and 1468 sqm holding”?
For starters, it would be nice if our friends at Purple Sakura Pty Ltd would drop by to give their multimillion-dollar investment a mow.
Watch this space.
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