Artist’s impression showing Lendlease’s Rozelle Bay proposed project, as seen from the Glebe foreshore.

By Åsa Wahlquist, Convenor, Bays and Foreshores, from Bulletin 6/2026 (August)

The focus this past year has been on development around the shores of Blackwattle and Rozelle Bays: development underway, planned and threatened. We had one important win: Wentworth Park will be returned to the community later this year, after the NSW Greyhound Breeders, Owners and Trainers’ Association holds its last race in October.

Inadequate public transport and parking

The new $836 million new Sydney Fish Market opened in January with the chaos on the local roads and public transport that the Fish Market Community Consultative Committee (CCC) had been warning about for the past five years.

Deputy Lord Mayor, Jess Miller, has been consulting with local residents about potential changes to parking restrictions, but the bottom line is that providing 340 parking spaces for a market with a capacity for 5000 was always going to create problems for the local community.

This story will probably be repeated at the old Fish Market site, where Infrastructure NSW (INSW) expects the entire site to eventually house 2400 residents and provide facilities for 5600 workers: a total of 8000 people.

View across Blackwattle Bay to the old Fish Market site where the Mirvac development is planned, July 2026 (image: Helena Klijn)

The NSW Government is also threatening to build about 8500 apartments and an, as yet, unspecified number of businesses on the western side of the Anzac Bridge.

Transport for NSW (TfNSW)’s underestimation of the impact on both road and light transport for the new Fish Market, along with the push for fewer private parking spaces in new developments, raises massive questions about the impact on our local transport system of these developments.

One bright spot was Pyrmont architect, Andrew Benn’s, imaginative idea for a new Glebe Island Bridge. The Glebe Society has campaigned for years for the restoration of the current bridge. However, the NSW Government’s plans for a regular ferry service to the Fish Market could scupper this. Andrew’s plan was tall enough for ferries to pass underneath. See the article that appeared in the October 2025 Bulletin.

Fish Market ferry wharf

And when are those Fish Market ferries likely to start running? Under the original proposal Multiplex was to build the public wharf. That changed last year, without explanation. What we do know is that the new wharf could

not be built until the fishing fleet had moved to the wharves of the new Fish Market. Only then the old wharves that the fleet used could be pulled down and construction of the new wharf begin. The last the CCC heard, in March, was that TfNSW was still ‘working through the process’ to demolish the old wharves.

The Fish Market will be serviced by a 200-seater river class ferry, like the one that goes to Parramatta. Whether it will be a separate service from the current Glebe ferry, or our commuter run will become a longer tourist haul, has yet to be decided.

Overdevelopment

It must be a truism of the state government that any state-owned waterfront land is in need of massive overdevelopment. And thus, we have plans for both Blackwattle Bay (the old Fish Market site) and Bays West (Rozelle Bay) on the way.

The initial plans, in 2021, to build 45-storey apartments at Blackwattle Bay were met with literally thousands of objections. INSW responded by stating that buildings would not be higher than 35 storeys.

View across Rozelle Bay towards the site of the Bays West redevelopment proposal (image: Helena Klijn)

However, Mirvac, the developer of Blackwattle Bay, has other ideas, with plans for a 150-metre high, 42-storey apartment block–taller than the struts on the nearby Anzac Bridge–and another block at 36 storeys. See last month’s  Bulletin article.

Rest assured the Glebe Society will vigorously oppose this outrage when the development applications are released.

One of the great joys of walking along our foreshore is watching the tugs and work boats, the last of Sydney’s working harbour, alongside the wonderfully restored boats and works in progress of the Sydney Heritage Fleet.

The area has long been slated for redevelopment. The problem facing the working harbour businesses along Rozelle Bay is that there is just nowhere else left in the Harbour for them to go. See the article that appeared in the March 2026 Bulletin.

The NSW Government has since offered them an alternate site on White Bay, clearing the way for a wall of apartments along the northern side of Rozelle Bay. There is still a long path ahead, with the Government recently launching an international design competition for the area.

Rozelle Bay and bird, March 2026 (photo: Phil Vergison)