Inside the new Sydney Fish Market (don’t hold your breath for Xmas)
Retailers at the nearly finished $836 million Sydney Fish Market are racing to be ready for the Christmas prawn and oyster splurge that is their biggest sales day of the year, but NSW Premier Chris Minns has warned customers not to get their hopes up.
Construction giant Multiplex is due to hand the keys to the state government in mid-November, but a media tour of the complex on the foreshore in the inner-city suburb of Glebe revealed the huge amount of work still to be done on fit-outs and other preparations for its 40 retailers.
“We’re celebrating the fact that our tenants are completing their fit-outs, and we are literally daily looking at that program to make the right call at the right time,” Sydney Fish Market chief executive Daniel Jarosch told journalists on Thursday after being pressed to confirm if it would be open before Christmas.
“We just want to have the right number of retailers at the right time open and make it a success.”
More than 6 million visitors a year are expected through the turnstiles at the new complex, which replaces the old market that has been a staple of Sydney seafood lovers since it opened in the 1960s but has become run-down.
But when the Financial Review toured the new Sydney Fish Market on Thursday morning, fit-out of retail spaces had barely begun, meaning a huge amount of work would need to be completed to ensure it is ready for the flurry of seafood shoppers and curious locals in the weeks leading up to Christmas.
The new and expansive building is double the size of the old one and will rehouse beloved fishmongers and feature new restaurants, cafés and bars with amphitheatre-like steps facing Blackwattle Bay for the public to sit on while eating breakfast, lunch and dinner.
On Thursday’s tour, light flooded the inside of the market halls through a roof designed by Danish architects 3XN and GXN that features hundreds of small windows above 594 timber beams in a crisscross pattern.
Underneath the retail precinct is a temperature-controlled seafood preparation area set at 14 degrees for mongers to prepare the day’s trade. Along the front of the building are windows for locals and tourists to watch the preparation.
The traders’ auditorium is part of the retail precinct for tourists to watch the sale process.
A waterfront promenade will connect the 15-kilometre foreshore walking track from Rozelle Bay to Woolloomooloo.
“I think taxpayers in NSW are going to get a pleasant shock at the scale, at how much fun it is and how it will be a must-see destination for those who come to Sydney when they spend some time in our beautiful harbour city,” Minns said.
New apartments
But he struck a cautionary note about Christmas. “I think Daniel made the right decision to say, ‘look, I don’t want to make a promise that we can’t meet’, but everybody’s working incredibly hard to finish it as soon as possible,” Minns said.
The old market building next door could make way for up to 16,000 new apartments if private owners agree to sell their land alongside the government.
The Financial Review understands Lendlease and Mirvac are the final two developers battling it out for the tender.
“We’re currently dealing with two developers for the government-owned land, which is on the existing food market site,” Infrastructure NSW chief executive Tom Gellibrand said.
The opening uncertainty comes as Multiplex sues Infrastructure NSW and Sydney Fish Market over cost blowouts that could cause the total bill of the project to be $1.08 billion, according to The Sydney Morning Herald.
Jarosch confirmed the market had returned to profitability after writing off more than $17 million in impairments over the past two years.
