Lang Walker has been praised in death as a pioneering property developer who changed the face of Sydney and helped reorient the city’s future toward the west.
Walker Corporation developed some of central Sydney’s most recognised locations, including King Street Wharf in the 1990s, Broadway shopping centre and the Finger Wharf at Woolloomooloo.
Lang Walker at the Rhodes shopping and residential site in 2006.Credit: Louie Douvis
However, it was Walker’s work decontaminating former industrial land at Rhodes, and transforming Sydney’s second CBD with his more recent Parramatta Square project, that cemented the billionaire’s legacy as a city-shaper.
“Parramatta Square is clearly his most recent crowning achievement,” said Rick Graf, development director at property group Billbergia. “It has changed the central city for the better and forever.”
The advent of Parramatta as a second commercial centre for Sydney came in part by Walker trading residential development rights in return for long-term, guaranteed occupation by state government agencies, which began moving west in 2019, just before the pandemic.
“Not many people would do that, or have the vision to think that,” says Tom Forrest, head of developer lobby group Urban Taskforce. “It was a fundamental change to the landscape of Sydney. He made the second city real.”
Former NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet (3rd from left) and Lang Walker (right) attending a topping out ceremony at Parramatta Square in 2021.Credit: Kate Geraghty
Forrest also praises Walker for his work in Rhodes, which is now a successful example of high-density development around a train station – the kind of transit-oriented development the new state government has been so keen to accelerate.
Walker decontaminated the ex-industrial land at what is now the southern end of the Rhodes precinct, and developed the early residential towers and shopping centre. More recently, Billbergia has developed the northern end of Rhodes, and adjacent Wentworth Point linked by the Bennelong Bridge.
Lang Walker, the pioneer who taught Sydney to embrace its west
10
1
28.01.2024
Lang Walker has been praised in death as a pioneering property developer who changed the face of Sydney and helped reorient the city’s future toward the west.
Walker Corporation developed some of central Sydney’s most recognised locations, including King Street Wharf in the 1990s, Broadway shopping centre and the Finger Wharf at Woolloomooloo.
Lang Walker at the Rhodes shopping and residential site in 2006.Credit: Louie Douvis
However, it was Walker’s work decontaminating former........
© The Sydney Morning Herald
visit website
login
who are we?
contact us
qosheapp
Toi Staff
Gideon Levy
Belen Fernandez
Andrew Mitrovica
Mort Laitner
Nikkei Editorial
Rami G Khouri
Ali Fathollah-Nejad
