IT WAS Canberra's first factory, in operation in 1913, and it provided the bricks for some of the capital's earliest buildings. It has several different kinds of kilns, including one, the Staffordshire, which was the first of its kind in Australia and is believed to be the only surviving example. The towering main chimney is a Canberra landmark, visible from the Lake Burley Griffin foreshores and New Parliament House. But the brickworks in Yarralumla have been left to decay since their closure in 1976.
As part of a larger area potentially offering prime real estate for housing development, the site holds great appeal for other than heritage interests, while Yarralumla residents worry about potential traffic problems and losing recreational space. Can the government balance all the competing interests?
In 2007, the National Trust of Australia first put the brickworks on its top 10 most endangered heritage places in Australia, a list it calls Our Heritage at Risk. The brickworks are again on the list in 2009, for the third year in a row. The trust decries the site's ''lack of regular maintenance and willful neglect by successive government bodies'', and hopes for a restoration of the buildings ''in accordance with their stated heritage values''.
The ACT National Trust has no doubt about the brickworks' heritage value, to Canberra and the nation. Heritage officer Peter Dowling says it was responsible for the very bricks from which Old Parliament House was made.
''The bricks were made at the brickworks, cured, then put on a train to Old Parliament House, one of the Canberra's icon buildings. The bricks for all the early suburbs were made there all those little redbrick houses in Reid and Turner. You could say it was Canberra's first industry,'' he says.
The brickworks were entered on to the ACT Heritage Register in May 2001. Parts of the site are currently used by three artists and Thor's Hammer, a timber recycling business. Dowling says almost nothing has been done to restore or preserve the brickworks since they closed in 1976.
''Successive governments in Canberra, or in charge of Canberra, have just allowed the brickworks to deteriorate. It's been one of the great fenced and forgotten heritage sites in Canberra. We're very concerned about it.''
The only restoration work the trust is aware of is some stabilisation work by the ACT Government on the the main chimney, which dates back to 1953. The motivation, Dowling says, was safety rather than heritage. In the absence of any restoration work, as bricks loosen, safety has become a growing concern. Yet no detailed study has yet been conducted into the state of the buildings.
In February last year the Land Development Agency, which sells and develops land on behalf of the ACT Government, sought expressions of interest to ''acquire, conserve and redevelop'' the brickworks site. The site for which the agency sought expressions of interested included not just the brickworks itself, but also block 3, section 94, an undeveloped area which extends from the brickworks along Denman Street and Kintore Crescent. The ACT National Trust says the government should have come up with a conservation management plan before putting out any tenders. ''That's squarely the responsibility of the ACT Government, under the heritage legislation,'' Dowling says.
The Yarralumla Residents Association also supports a heritage assessment of the brickworks. The association put a submission into the agency, emphasising the importance of the ''preservation, conservation and maintenance'' of the brickworks. A resolution to the long-term use of the ''increasingly dangerous site'', the group said, was ''long overdue''.
Denise Page, a committee member of the association, says the residents are also concerned about losing the undeveloped space adjoining the brickworks. Page feels the land was offered as an inducement to businesses, to offset the work and money that would be needed to clean up the site. She says, ''We don't want all that public land to be built on perhaps a small development. There are a lot of walking trails through there, and it's used extensively by walkers.''
The brickworks site adjoins land that would make any developer's mouth water. Yarralumla is prime real estate. The top 50 sales for the suburb start at $1.2 million and climb to $2.75 million. The median property price is $886,000, for houses $972,000, and for units $783,000. Richard Luton Properties owner Richard Luton says any new land in the area released for housing would generate intense interest.
''Any infill in the inner south is very valuable. You just go to the old homes that were built in Yarralumla 50 years ago, the old weatherboards, and people have been paying $800,000 to $900,000 for those, to knock them down and build their dream homes there.''
He says new house-sized blocks released in Yarralumla would probably attract prices of just under $1 million ''depending on the size of the block''. A 2005 report by the ACT Planning and Land Authority (ACTPLA) ruled out building houses on the actual site of the brickworks, block 1, section 102, because this would ''have a significant impact on the setting of the existing heritage building''. However, the report examined three options for building up to 25 dwellings (the 'acceptable level of development' for the community) on block 7, section 102.
The report leaned towards the option of standard residential blocks, of 700 to 750sqm. Their sale was then estimated to net $8.7 million for the government. Last month, the Land Development Agency changed tack on the brickworks site. Although it had received a number of ''high quality'' expressions of interest in the brickworks, the agency decided to suspend the process, opting instead to draw up a conservation management plan for the site.
Chief Minister Jon Stanhope explained this week that the expressions of interest required more development to ''secure the conservation and reuse of the brickwork buildings and site'' than the government had contemplated.
''This had two implications. The first was that it is vitally important to clarify the extent to which public funds will be necessary to achieve the conservation and reuse objectives, [which requires] having the conservation management plan in place before development ...'' he said.
''The second implication is that the community deserves to know the exact nature of the [plan] so that they can appreciate and comment in an informed way on proposals which potentially may involve a more intensive development of the site than had been envisaged.''
The Government hopes the conservation management plan will be complete by March 2010.
Stanhope said some development on the non-heritage parts of the site was likely because it would ''significantly contribute'' to the preservation of the brickworks by facilitating public access. Earlier this month, Stanhope told The Canberra Times: ''I would think that in the context of a genuine, continuing use of the site, that housing is a logical use for parts of the site and as long as that can be achieved without significant degradation of the existing amenity and without impacting on the heritage values, then I would certainly expect housing would be a reasonable use of parts of the site.''
The ACT National Trust seems to be roughly on the same page, arguing commercial interests and heritage don't have to be mutually exclusive. Dowling points to the ''pretty good job'' the Stanhope government did in preserving the Kingston Powerhouse, an $11 million project that retained many of the features of the original building while also adding the Canberra Glassworks. He said, ''That should be the model. The trust would like to see conservation work done at the brickworks, and also to see it opened up for some commercial and community activities. We'd like to see it become enriched and brought back to life.''
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