There is much that is puzzling about GPT's three-year run as the saviour of Newcastle. The sheer scale of GPT's plan announced in 2007 was puzzling - from the astonishing artist's impressions, through the $600 million cost to the company's claim that its project would restore Newcastle as the Hunter's economic and retail powerhouse. That this big development company believed its magnanimous plan for a mall as dead as a dodo and for almost as long could work at any level, even just to survive, is puzzling. The conspiracy theory that GPT spent $100 million buying Newcastle CBD buildings simply to prevent another company creating a big shopping centre to compete against GPT's Charlestown Square has its temptations, but it seems to me to be as unlikely as GPT believing its $600 million development would resurrect inner Newcastle as the region's commercial powerhouse.
It is puzzling why it took GPT 12 months after its grand announcement to realise that the barrier between its development and the magnificent harbour foreshore would render the project unviable. It is puzzling that the State Government did not accept the truth of GPT's concern and its warning that it would have to abandon. It is puzzling that the parliamentarian most directly charged with protecting Newcastle's interests, Jodi McKay, played such hardball by accusing the company of arrogance. It is puzzling that Ms McKay didn't keep GPT abreast of progress towards a decision to remove the railway line, a decision she disclosed only on the day of GPT's retreat from Newcastle.
It's not puzzling that the save-the-rail ranters have been so uncharacteristically subdued. They know that soon there'll be no reason for anyone to catch the train into Newcastle.
Can you throw any light on these mysteries?
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