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Police Complex
South Terrace
The first building on the site was the Barracks, built about 1853 for the accommodation of the Enrolled Pensioner guards who arrived with the convicts. All that remains of that construction is the wall along the footpath (part of which has already been demolished). As John Dowson sets it out in his booklet on the Synagogue, the building was used in 1886 by the Immigration Department, an Old Mens Home, 1901-12, the No. 8 General (Base) Hospital 1914-24, then for Immigrants again, before its demolition in 1950, after which the Stan Reilly aged accommodation centre was built. That was demolished in expectation of the police station being built, but was used as a carpark while the powers-that-be got around to it (while the police had to make do with a former bank building in High Street). In 2023, some idea of the new building has finally been released.
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Fremantle Society newsletter: 20 June 2023: Police Complex on South Terrace
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Fremantle Society newsletter 7 July 2023: $100 million Police Palace
The image below c. 1910 shows the Pensioner Guard Barracks on South Terrace where the Police Complex will be built. Courtesy Rob Campbell.
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First we had the $100 million Movie Studio proposal for Victoria Quay - a poorly planned thought bubble.
Then we had the hideous $100 million truck playground at High and Stirling Highway intersection by Main Roads - which unfortunately did get built, and which scars forever a main entry into a world famous town.
Now we get a $100 million Police Palace proposition - put within the buffer zone of the World Heritage Prison.
You will remember that for 100 years the police had a huge 5,500 sqm compound on Henderson Street - and in the 1990s a new courthouse was built across the road from it to work with that complex.
Then the Henderson Street constabulary sought something more modern and were told it would cost $20 million to upgrade their site. Wow, that was far too expensive, so they all relocated to an old bank in High Street where they are today, and sold their huge valuable site for next to nothing to local developer Gerard O'Brien, who is filling the site with alcohol venues.
Last year The Fremantle Society had a meeting with Fremantle Council CEO Glen Dougall and Director of Planning Russell Kingdom and asked that the Society be informed ahead of time of major projects in the system so we didnt get to see them just at the last minute when years of work had already gone into a plan.
But we have had no co-operation from Council and suddenly the Police Complex plans are done and put out for public comment (submissions close next Tuesday 11th July even though some of the documents online are the wrong ones).
Some people were aware of the plans last year and the Fremantle History Society were invited to a meeting, but not The Fremantle Society.
It is infuriating to yet again be placed in the position of having to be reactive to a major proposal at such a late stage.
A few observations:
1) The proposed building seeks to adulate the brutal and monstrous scale of Fremantle Hospital, which is an aberration, and not a precedent. The bulk and scale of the police complex is excessive.
2) There is nothing about the building that shows respect for site context.
3) The proposal blocks views to and from the World Heritage Prison.
4) The convict wall is of exceptional significance and must not be reduced in length.
5) The archaeology of the site is likely to be of exceptional significance given its use for dozens of homes for Pensioner Guards in the barracks there. Its careful search, and subsequent care of artefacts, must be well planned.
6) The Federal Government needs to make an assessment of this proposal as it affects the world heritage listed prison.
7) The chosen site is too congested for its purpose and better sites exist which are cheaper. Marine House for example on Marine Terrace has just had millions of dollars spent on upgrades and is available.
Local architect's view:
PROPOSED NEW POLICE BUILDING, FREMANTLE: DRAFT
The height, length, and resultant massing of the proposed new police building on South Terrace Fremantle are all a bulky and unfortunate visual reinforcement of the adjacent Fremantle Hospital and the Arundel Street flats, both significant past failures in the crucial matter of appropriate cityscape design.
As a related issue, the new Forrest Hotel proponents argued that adjacent modern building heights and bulk, including that of the Henderson Street carpark, justified the out-of-scale massing of their new building complex in William Street.
In exactly the same way, the bulk and massing of Fremantle Hospital - a mistake in the late 1970s and a mistake still today - is now contributing to a seemingly semi-conscious acceptance that contemporary buildings should also be able to repeat this same mistake.
The time is far overdue for Council and others responsible for guiding the future of our city to say No; enough is enough. ...
Adding to the problem of massing and bulk, is the regrettable fact that the proposed Police building presents a blank facade to South Terrace. The best and most successful city centres feature buildings which interact and "belong" to the street; which provide opportunities for entry-exit, visual use-connections, community meeting or assembly points, and the like. A tall blank-walled office complex that presents no interactive relationship at street level is completely contrary to this principle.
This is not necessarily the fault per se of the proposed new building, but it may be. A different planning approach, one that agrees that South Terrace street-interactivity is an essential feature, could provide appropriate uses for this street-facing section at ground level. This would be good for both the essence and success of community policing, and for the residents of Fremantle.
But it may also simply mean that the building is in the wrong place. If such a building needs to turn its back to the street and to the community, it probably doesn't belong where it is currently proposed to be. The planning layouts and relationships which underpin the design layout need not be wasted. But they could and should be developed and expressed on a better and more appropriate site.
There are vacant buildings in Fremantle that could be repurposed. Marine House on Essex Street is a good example. It is well sited for easy vehicular access; internal works can repeat the functional planning relationships explored for the current building layout; and total costs would almost certainly be well below the current budget estimates for the South Terrace development.
Finally, in order that our World Heritage city of Fremantle be both preserved and developed appropriately and sensitively, we need Government services and bodies to lead the way. There is a strong case to suspend work on this development and to provide a new police headquarters which is part of the preservation of Fremantle, not the destruction of Fremantle.
John Dowson
President
The Fremantle Society
John.dowson@yahoo.com
0409223622
7 July 2023
Fremantle Herald, Saturday 2 September 2023
Fremantle Society newslettr 1 September 2023: Call to Action - Yet Again
The handling of the new police complex issue by the Mayor and officers is scandalous, and only the councillors who care will make a difference to what council sends to JDAP after next Wednesday's planning meeting about the $100 million new police complex on South Terrace, which could have been built for vastly less money on the huge site the police already had on Henderson Street which experts the Fremantle Society met yesterday said could have been remediated for $20 million.
The Fremantle Society attended the Politics in the Pub featured in the photo above from tomorrow's Herald and made the comments which appear at the end of our letter below to councillors today after hearing of yet another council scandal – the interference by the Labor mayor in the democratic process of council by allegedly pressuring councillors to support her masters in parliament house to have the new police complex approved – despite concerns from her own councillors, EVERYONE who made a submission, the experts at Fremantle Prison, and the Fremantle Society.
Sent to All Councillors Today:
Dear Councillors
It is deeply disturbing to hear that:
a) the mayor is encouraging councillors to support the appalling police complex proposal on South Terrace, which doesnt even go to full council.
b) that despite all submissions being against the proposal, officers are recommending approval.
c) that despite the prison opposing the proposal and sending their comments to council officers, those objections have been ignored.
d) despite the importance of this proposal and getting it right, the process has ignored council concerns since 2020 under Mayor Pettitt, that the government has done highly secretive and selective consultation, and that Fremantle Council appears to be doing the bidding of the State Government instead of genuinely being interested in what the community wants and where the much needed new building actually should go.
Please see below material provided to the Herald (and their front page story today available above)
Regards
John
John Dowson
President
The Fremantle Society
tel (61 8) 9335 2113
0409 22 36 22
Forwarded message -----
From: John Dowson <j_dowson@yahoo.com>
To: Steve Grant <steve.inhouse@fremantleherald.com>; Steve Grant <steve.grant@fremantleherald.com>
Sent: Wednesday, 30 August 2023, 10:26:36 am GMT-7
Subject: Police Complex Proposal South Terrace Fremantle
Hi Steve,
Your work (Herald July 8, 2023) and that of Garry Gillard on the walls of the convict establishment and why they are so incredibly important to protect and celebrate, frames the World Heritage site.
Inside that wall, as part of the World Heritage Buffer Zone, but without proper heritage protection, lies the site known recently as the Stan Reilly site, and initially the Pensioners' Barracks.
Its importance led me to write a report in 2005 entitled Fremantle: The Future is in the Past, to highlight the importance of the area, then subject to an interim 2005 draft Precinct Plan (attached) which, while it kept heights to two storeys on the edges and four in the middle, had problems disregarding some heritage issues such as what could be allowed at the northern end of the Synagogue site.
Astonishingly, now we suddenly find a proposal going to council and then JDAP for a monstrous, faceless police complex as high as the detested 10 storey Johnson Court block of flats.
A quick chronology that was part of my 2005 report of that site may be helpful in appreciating the huge human history of the site with its community uses. Some may argue a police complex is a community use, but it is one very different to previous uses - and its scale and design is totally inappropriate.
1854. Pensioner Barracks built.
1886. Immigration Department
1901. Old Men's Home, with its own grass tennis court.
1912. Old men moved to Dalkeith. Immigration home again.
1915-1920. No 8 AGH Hospital for WW1 wounded
1930s. Methodist Mission ran services giving help, at its peak, to over 900 unemployed men during Depression.
1940s. Said to be used for torpedo storage.
1947. Post WW2 housing shortages: Mrs Ingham rented the site to 14 families
1950s. Following use by groups like Fremantle Police & Citizens it was pulled down 1955
1976. Stan Reilly social centre and frail-aged lodge, designed over 10 year period by architect Rob Campbell, named after manager for John Lysaght. By 1985 the budget had blown out by 400% leading Cr John Troy to exclaim: "The financial responsibility now rests with the council, and if a decision has to be made between services and a millionaire's cup race then the decision should be clear."
2017. Stan Reilly demolished and turned into a 155 bay car park.
If you have time you may be interested in the 2005 Precinct Plan Draft from 2005 and my email also attached from 2005 when I was deputy mayor, raising concerns about what I considered to be insensitivities in that plan. They are nothing compared to the horror show of insensitivity we face now from the State Government ramming this project down our necks.
Regards
John
John Dowson
President
The Fremantle Society
Steamship Buildings
Western Australia 6160
Australia
tel (61 8) 9335 2113
0409 22 36 22
Call to Action
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Send this or the front page of the Herald to the relevant ministers
Police Minister Papalia: Minister.Papalia@dpc.wa.gov.au
McGurk: fremantle@mp.wa.gov.au
members @fremantle.wa.gov.au
References and Links
See also: Barracks, Synagogue.
This page incorporates material from Garry Gillard's Freotopia website, that he started in 2014 and the contents of which he donated to Wikimedia Australia in 2024. The content was originally created on 21 June, 2023 and hosted at freotopia.org/society/campaign/police.html (it was last updated on 2 September, 2023). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.