The existing entrance from the Strand will be converted to a new retail store. The Adelaide Street entrance will be closed and converted to a fire escape door serving the retained basement retail and office space. The William IV Street entrance will be converted to a fire escape.
It’s the sort of planning application that makes perfect common sense and is difficult to argue against — and yet, there’s a nagging doubt, a sense that something will be lost. The underpass is grim, it’s unpleasant, it’s useless — and yet that’s what gives it the character that it has. It’s a relic of the 1970s, in appearance and effect and to lose it is both no loss at all, and yet leaves a howling wake at its loss.
It’s a fantasy escape from the bland world above with their uniform coffee shops and clothes outlets into a hidden dark unpolished world, if only for a few minutes as we hurry to trains and work.
If the
planning application is approved, bankers will sit in meetings where today people shop for magical ephemera and fancy dress costumes. People in deep conversations will wander carpeted corridors that was once a dirty public subway.
It will be better. And yet it will be so much worse.
Head down there soon, delight in the curious passages that will soon be lost, maybe buy something, but most of all, soak up the infested atmosphere of decay and despair before it’s lost forever.
