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THE "green shoots of recovery" can be seen in Newcastle's city centre according to a Newcastle City Council report. The overall number of vacant buildings, shop fronts and lots in the city centre had decreased from 166 in January last year to 145 that June. The report cited the reopening of Hunter Street Mall and increased activity brought about through the Renew Newcastle initiative, which...
The post-industrial city of Newcastle is reinventing itself as a centre for culture, art, music and crafts thanks to initiatives like Renew Newcastle.
First-time visitors to Newcastle are often shocked to discover that more than one third of shop fronts in the city’s Central Business District lie eerily abandoned.
According to property developers GPT Group, the decline of Newcastle’s CBD is...
"Renew Newcastle has seen an abundance of artisians move into vacant buildings in the previously bereft Newcastle Mall. Not only have they injected life into the area and seen boarded up or vandalised shop fronts filled with colour, vitality and talent - it's had a knock-on effect with businesses moving into the area along with the crowds." - from Pink Patent Mary Jane's Blog.
*"the Renew Newcastle project enabled small businesses, artists, entrepreneurs and various creatives to find a temporary home in these largely unoccupied city centre spaces. By liaising with the building owners, the project found a way of offering super-short-term leases at peppercorn rents in all kinds of pretty vacant spaces. They overlaid a free wi-fi network, enabling basic connectivity...
Renew Newcastle creative arts project founder Marcus Westbury was named Newcastle's citizen of the year and leukaemia survivor and Cancer Council volunteer (and Newcastle Fashion Week organiser) Louise Mackay the young citizen of the year.
From The Galway Adertiser, Ireland:
"Vacant and disused buildings around Galway city should not be allowed to lie empty and idle. Instead they could be transformed into temporary art galleries and exhibition spaces... Projects such as Swing Space in New York, Britain’s the Caretaker Project, and Australia’s Renew Newcastle Project have won acclaim for transforming run down areas into thriving c...
Arts commentator Marcus Westbury was born in Newcastle in NSW, where the city's port is a gateway for the world's largest export of coal.
But over recent decades the Newcastle CBD has pretty much died. There are over 130 empty buildings in the two main streets of the city centre.
Now in his 30s, Marcus has returned to his hometown to try and revitalise the two main streets with a project called ...
AFTER years of depression and desperation about Newcastle's decay, one of the biggest stories of 2009 was an ambitious but simple plan to bring life back to the city.
Young and creative people have helped make the Renew Newcastle project the signature move to get the city thinking positive again.
The project has made news around Australia and the world, which makes Renew founder Marcus Westbury o...
Alex Thompson, of Hamilton, registered the name Surfhouse Photography when she was a 16-year-old as part of a long-range plan to be her own boss.
She worked odd jobs in restaurants, at Knights match days and at Subway to put herself through a diploma of photography course in Sydney.
Now 21, last week found her amid her collection of surfscapes applying the fi nishing touches to her...
It may well be the miracle on Hunter Street.
A minor one, but still a miracle.
Newcastle's main drag has a pulse. The business strip once declared dead is not as yet displaying a full set of vital signs, but there is a flicker of life and with that a sense of hope and renewal.
The unlikely hero of this possible resurrection is neither politician nor business leader but rather a self-confessed...
