Road trip to Avoca

Last week, several friends and I drove up to Avoca for the day, where one of guys we were with grew up. Our return journey to Sydney was partly provided by my friends mother, who drove us from Avoca to Gosford Station. She obviously took a lot of pleasure in showing us around, and drove us down to a carpark on the waterfront, off the Central Coast Highway facing The Broadwater. 

What reminded me of our Urban Design course was that while we were sitting in the car looking over the water, she told us a bit of the history of the area, and a few her opinions about the local development. 

In the image above, the car park we were sitting in is the yellow circle on the right, and the yellow circle to the top is the now closed Iguanas Bar and Restaurant.  She mentioned that the addition of Iguanas was such a good thing for the area, which does lack in nice places to go for a drink or dinner, and has such amazing views of the bay, but a combination of the characteristics of the immediate area, and various local planning decisions forced the place to close down. 

Surrounding the area are various pieces of infrastructure that contribute to the public nature of the space. One of the first things she mentioned was the presence of a cycle/walking path with which you can cycle around the entire bay. The location of the car park in relation to the bike path can be seen below.

Scattered throughout the area in relatively close proximity to each other are a variety of other public space, infrastructure, or civic buildings such as:

a. Gosford Race Course 

b. Gosford Train Station

c. Bluetongue Central Coast Stadium

d. Gosford TAFE Campus

e. (the carpark location)

f. Gosford Olympic Swimming Pool

Others include shopping centers, parks, schools, and shops. 

Sitting in the car that afternoon, and that evening after I arrived home, I began to think of how all these elements contributed to the closing down of Iguanas, and could it have anything to do with the infrastructure or elements of the surrounding area. Given my limited knowledge of the area, the first two things I first observed that may have contributed could have been the presence of the Central Coast Highway, and the urban form of the blocks and buildings. 

Above is a screenshot from Google Maps of the Central Coast highway, which separates the waterfront (and Iguanas visible to the left of the highway) from the residential and commercial parts of Gosford. While the plantings and trees surrounding the highway make it relatively pleasant to walk along, it still presents a major physical barrier to pedestrians trying to access the waterfront. 

One of the most interesting things I noted while driving along the highway is the part seen above, where the highway is in extremely close proximity to both the Stadium and the waterfront. 

As it appears, most major infrastructure or public spaces that would draw crowds of people, are separated from the waterfront (and Iguanas) by the highway. This means that the venue is most easily accessed by car, and not by walking.

The other observable element that may contribute is the amount of surface space taken up by parks and setbacks. While parts of the area are fairly heavily built up, with multilevel residential, shops, offices and houses joined by small streets and laneways, significant amounts of land are also filled in with parks and green open space, especially surrounding the location of the restaurant. Contributing to this is that many of the built up areas are located along the waterfronts of the various inlets and bays in the area, which would make the ideal form of transport a car due to the distances between potential destinations.   The built up areas and location of the restaurant (in yellow) can be seen below. 

Furthermore, my friends mother mentioned that the owner of the restaurant had been reassured by the local council that the waterfront would eventually be built up. This may have encouraged people to the area as well as further infrastructure, such as bus routes or bike lanes. However this never came to be and the restaurant was forced to close. 

So from a fairly superficial analysis of the area based on observable characteristics of the suburb, as well as what my friends mother told us, I can suggest that it is potentially the low walkability of the area, due to the separating presence of the highway and amounts of open spaces that lead to the closure of the restaurant from a lack of patrons, despite promising amounts of public spaces and infrastructure available to diversity the area.