Newcastle Greens councillor John Mackenzie will tonight be asking council stand up for the city's working-class heritage.
Councillor Mackenzie will be moving a motion at Newcastle City Council's meeting to keep the facade of The Store building in Newcastle West intact and incorporate it into the state government's proposed bus interchange for the site.
He said they're not calling for the interchange not to be built altogether, they just want a compromise that works for everyone.
"We're not even suggesting that the whole of the building stay, there's a compromise here and that compromise is the opportunity to keep the facade and to build around it in a way that creates a hybrid that's something old and something new and points to the future direction of Newcastle."
The Store, formerly known as the Newcastle Co-operative Store was built in 1898 and was a thriving commercial entity in the heart of the city.
There's an immense amount of community support for the building - community consultation found 84% of submissions supported keeping the Store, 62% of those submissions called for the facade to be retained and incorporated into the interchange.
"The Store has an enormous history in Newcastle. The whole city basically was built on the back of the Newcastle Co-operative Store and that building even though it doesn't look how it did in its heyday it really represents an important moment in the political history of our city."
"Just to demolish it entirely I think does a disservice to the importance of the working class history of Newcastle. I think that's an important symbol and an important monument and it's up to council to defend the heritage of this city, we don't want generic buildings for the entirety of the city," said Councillor Mackenzie.
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