Take them back! The Sydney and Melbourne Buildings could be spectacular once more

If you're a Canberra lifer like me, you may find yourself trying your darndest to explain away Canberra's stranger characteristics.

But nowhere is this more difficult than when walking through Civic, especially around the two grand buildings that once formed our one and only CBD.

I have written thousands of words about these buildings, most of them in a faintly haranguing tone, somewhere along the lines of, why are these beautiful buildings being allowed to go to rack and ruin when they are placed so prominently, at the gateway to our city centre?

Why are Canberra's heritage laws so draconian in some places, and so completely absent exactly where it should matter most?

Many other cities have run-down areas, where buildings of faded glory have decades of dirt and neglect superimposed on their facades. But other cities can get away with this more readily, because they have more of them to maintain and thus neglect.

The Sydney and Melbourne buildings are really all we have in the way of between-war pre-Depression civic structures that aren't occupied by government institutions (the National Film and Sound Archive, for example) or privately owned hotels (the Hyatt or the Kurrajong).

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And the buildings themselves are objectively lovely. Can you imagine how wonderful it must have seemed to have them spring up in what were then the paddocks of the capital? Mediterranean-style arches and columns, terrazzo paving, shops, restaurants, cafes and some random offices and university campus classrooms for variety - this was Canberra's one and only downtown.

The exteriors were, in the early days, painted a specific biscuity colour - the same as the Albert Hall and Manuka Pool - with copper detailing around the high arched windows above the doorways, and black marble skirting.

When I was growing up in Canberra, I spent a lot more time around those buildings than I do now, and not only because of the bus interchange that occupies the outside of two sides of the Sydney Building. It goes without saying that I was completely oblivious to the buildings and their varying state of neglect. There was simply a lot more nightlife right there in the centre - a couple of pubs, a clutch of nightclubs that changed hands over the years, some live music venues and plenty of places to meet up.

The team behind a trio of new venues set to open in the Sydney Building by the end of the year are clearly hoping to reignite that spark, and are starting with the physical facade of the stretch that once housed, among other places, the Pancake Parlour.

And they've already begun the task of restoring their small corner of the city's heritage to its former glory, stripping away layers of paint to reveal gleaming copper window frames above the doorways.

It's a gutsy move, right smack in the middle of the bus interchange. All along the row is a mix of middling businesses, long-term hospitality stalwarts and boarded up shopfronts. The place reeks of urine, the tiles on the ground are cracked and grubby and there's graffiti everywhere.

A walk around both buildings with your eyes firmly trained upwards at the windows over the doorways is a depressing journey, and I wouldn't recommend it if you'd prefer to just enjoy how pretty and fragrant Canberra looks in the spring.

I had never paid attention until recently, but most shopfronts have painted over the copper with white, brown or black paint, and some have even painted over the window panes.

Only one other business I can see has stripped back the paint to reveal the copper - Spanish doughnut franchise San Churro, around the corner from the new venues.

And a fair few have, horrifyingly, removed the window frames altogether, opting instead for bland plate glass. It's these that tell me, most forcefully, that it's all too late - that Civic's heritage was destroyed long ago, never to be recovered. Never mind painstakingly scraping away at decades' worth of paint jobs - who's going to replace plate glass with multi-paned copper-framed windows?

The buildings' fate was decided, ultimately, by history rather than people. In the lead-up to the Depression, the state of Canberra's economy meant they were auctioned off under Crown Lease arrangements. This was before they were even built; each new owner constructed their part to an overall concept. This happened over two decades; over the years, various ownerships have passed through different hands, and the lots - each built roughly to the size of a Paddington terrace house - have been parcelled up into different venues.

The unfortunate result is more than 60 owners across 100 separate titles, only some of whom are invested in the buildings' aesthetic values. Because they are not under a single owner, or government-owned, there has never been much impetus to keep the facades intact, or even to maintain them to minimum standards.

The ACT Legislative Assembly recently passed legislation giving the City Renewal Authority power to carry out maintenance, most urgently the paintwork.

It's not that the owners can't agree on a plan - it's that many aren't even engaged in the process. And why would they be? The buildings are cluttered with businesses, many of which come and go. The spaces are, when all's said and done, desirable, and rents must vary according to the owners. And so there are restaurants and bars, convenience stores and tattoo parlours, physiotherapy clinics and wellness centres, all jumbled up and doing their thing.

I think I'm forever doomed to point to the newly-revealed copper above what is soon to be called Bada Bing, explaining to anyone who'll listen that this is what the buildings looked like when they first opened.

But here's a better idea, or at least an interesting proposition that can't help presenting itself: we know the ACT government is capable of compulsory acquisition - look at Calvary! Can they not acquire back these two beautiful buildings and make them the jewels they were always meant to be?

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