Changes are afoot in St Leonards and residents and workers will soon be able to enjoy a rejuvenated area with vastly improved open space amenity, pedestrian connections and retail and community event activation.
Arcadia-designed spaces in St Leonards will include:
Friedlander Place Precinct
In the heart of the CBD of St Leonards, Friedlander Place is a catalyst project that will transform an underutilised and tired plaza into a hub of community activity. The masterplanning for the site was completed in collaboration with two developers and the Lane Cove Council. Arcadia has continued to work with the new owners of the site, Mirvac and New Hope VIMG, to complete detailed design for the recently completed tender documents for the two development sites which border Friedlander Place – The Landmark and St Leonards Square.
Fronting the Pacific Highway, the landscape for Friedlander Place will enhance pedestrian access through the area to the station, linking to a finer grain of pedestrian experience. Amenity will include active cafe and retail frontages, public art opportunities, children’s playground, outdoor exercise area, ping pong tables and turf space. Friedlander Place will link to the public spaces for the adjoining development sites, integrating the residential tower lobbies for improved social connection to St Leonards.
88 Christie Street
The 88 Christie site site will provide a new subterranean link below Pacific Highway to the existing St Leonards station, enabling major public realm circulation through the site, with enhanced connections to Friedlander Place, bus interchange and the residential zones south of the Pacific Highway. Arcadia’s landscape concept is based on extending the “green fingers” connecting St Leonards to the bushland and harbour of St Leonards. With its signature green vertical terrace, green lobby and rooftop garden, the site’s public plaza will provide significant open space amenity with retail activation, passive recreation space, an events hub, play area, alfresco dining space and linkage to a proposed new park above the railway line, adjacent to the 88 Christie site.
RNS Hospital
Arcadia is working on two landscape projects within the Royal North Shore Hospital campus. This includes masterplan and detail plans for a childcare, which will include outdoor learning area, a nature trail, age-appropriate play mountains and sandpits, discovery fern garden, vegetable garden and shade trees. Arcadia has also designed an outdoor courtyard for the North Shore Private Hospital, which will provide a space for patients and their families to escape outdoors to an environment which will allow them to connect with nature and give the feeling of being in a home environment.