How this urban regeneration brought people back and made it safe after 5pm

Urban planning has a simple rule architect Phil Schoutrop swears by.

“It’s about what feels good,” he said. “You go to a place, you feel safe, you feel right.

“You don’t know what it is, but it’s sort of like, ‘I like it, I really like it, I don’t know why, but I really like what it is’.”

It’s the “umami” that makes a place special.

Schoutrop worked on the urban regeneration project of Nicholas Street in Ipswich Central, which garnered five awards this year alone. It has won six more since its creation.

He said the precinct was part of an effort to revitalise the city’s CBD that took the “old urban fabric or an older part of what Ipswich is, and tries to give it new life”.

“Before the works were undertaken, that part of Ipswich or that part of the city wasn’t necessarily a great place to be after 5pm,” he said.

But the precinct now formed the “heart of Ipswich”, according to Schoutrop.

Ross Elliott, director of policy group for suburbs and regions Suburban Futures, said the precinct had “injected new life” into the area.

“It was a place people didn’t feel safe. Now they flock to it.”

More than 520,000 people have visited the Venue building, home to tenants including Hoyts, miniBOUNCE, Vapiano, Anytime Fitness and more since its opening a year ago.

More than 2 million people visited the larger precinct, including the council libraries and heritage-listed Hotel Commonwealth, during that time. In contrast, the mall had just 20,000 visits a decade ago.

The project focused on turning the precinct into “a civic, cultural and community-focused destination”, Schoutrop said.

Part of this task involved removing cars from the area, building a 1000-space car park underneath and leaving the street level to pedestrians.

“We wanted to return the CBD to the community,” Schoutrop said.

Part of “reclaiming the street for the people” meant creating a space where people didn’t feel they needed to pay to be in, he said.

“It’s a space that you can sit in and enjoy. You don’t feel like you’re obliged to do anything with it. That happens when you open the civic space up to the public.”

While working on the project, Schoutrop said they focused on capturing the “authentic identity” of Ipswich. It had been rewarding to see locals treat the space as their own and feel like the project had made a difference, he told this masthead.

While not commercially focused, the Nicholas Street precinct regeneration had helped drive traffic to nearby streets.

“It’s like a halo effect”, Schoutrop said.

The new precinct had given families and the community spaces to come together, such as Tulmur Place.

Tulmur is the Yagara/Yugara word for the area of Ipswich, and preserving the Indigenous heritage of Ipswich was a focus.

“From our studies and connection to country, the idea of Indigenous and local people coming together in a certain spot is what the purpose for Tulmur Place was,” Schoutrop said.

An impressive aspect of the precinct is that it puts the council libraries — including Australia’s only standalone public children’s library — at the centre of the community, Elliott said.

“They do generate quite a bit of traffic, and it’s a lesson I think all councils could keep in mind is how to use community facilities like libraries, or sometimes a swimming pool, to leverage for greater effect,” he said.

When Ipswich Mayor Teresa Harding first decided to move north to Queensland, she had scoped out her options.

“I came into the mall, and I bought a sausage roll from Dominique’s Cafe and sat down on the park on the bench just outside and had a chat with some of the locals,” Harding said.

She said she instantly got the strong sense of community that made Ipswich special.

Since then, the area has had a “huge transformation”.

“I think it’s been a real triumph of urban renewal in a CBD precinct, and it’s bringing life back to the city centre. Residents love to come back into the city centre. It’s our city heart,” she said.

The mayor joked the project was “what happens when the politicians get out of the way and the experts actually do it”.

Part of the success was down to the council looking at how to uplift the CBD rather than a single property, like a developer might, Harding said.

The area had now become the primary location for community events, with 30 events held across 67 days in the past year.

To celebrate the precinct’s first birthday, there will be roving entertainment on Friday, November 7, and Saturday, November 8. The monthly handmade markets will also be held on Saturday.

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