LAWRENCE DROWN, XAVIER HAZARD, BEN HOLLAND, TIFFANY KIRKWOOD, CHLOE LEWIS, KEELY LIRON, EM MADDOCKS, JESSE MARTIN, REBEKAH O’HEARN, CHARLOTTE SAXON, ISABELLA SULLIVAN, JASMINE TREWIN, ERNEST TSE, BRIANA WALKER, RUBY WHEELER – WITH CHRIS THOMSON

A new cafe planned for a defunct sewage pumping station at Langley Park on the doorstep of Perth’s CBD has been unanimously blocked by a city committee.

Pump station, with Riverside Drive in the background. Photo: GHD, Langley Water Pump Station Consultation Outcomes Report

Earlier this month the City of Perth’s Design Advisory Committee unanimously rejected a plan to redevelop the pictured Hill Street Pump Station located on Terrace Road.

The committee considered that the plans were “unresolved”, and the application provided “insufficient information to formally consider the proposal”.

“Its premature submission for approval is inconsistent with the orderly and proper planning for an important public space,” the committee opined.

Among other motions, committee member Malcolm Mackay moved, and his committee colleague Andy Sharp seconded, that additional detail be provided on a glass fence that the committee considered would “essentially privatise” portions of Langley Park.

Pump station, with Hill Street rising up to Hay Street in the background. Photo: State Heritage Office of WA

The planned cafe has been on the drawing board since late 2015, with a Perth council mail-out to 1200 ratepayers at the time soliciting 13 responses, most of which suggested a cafe.

Back then, Perth ratepayer Soliman Allam suggested a “classy cafe/restaurant” for the state heritage listed structure.

Fellow ratepayer Richard Ng suggested turning the pump station “into a charming old-world Australian-style cafe that serves ONLY Australian fare”.

Harry and Yvonne Marwick thought the pumping station would “make a great themed café/coffee shop, which could act as a pseudo museum or at least a reminder of the early airfield [at Langley Park] and what the foreshore looked like through the city’s evolution”.

The 1914-built Hill Street Pump Station is on the state heritage list, and was decommissioned in 1989.