Cultural Hub Planned for Belvoir St Theatre Revamp

A Surry Hills threatre part owned by major names in the entertainment business including actors Sam Neill and Nicole Kidman is planning a redevelopment as it looks to safeguard its future.

The Belvoir Street Theatre Ltd has filed plans with the City of Sydney for additions and alterations to its home at 486-490 Elizabeth Street.

It is seeking “to improve the long-term viability” of the building that was purchased in the early 2000s “but is no longer an appropriate place to work due to its lack of universal access and physical deterioration, despite numerous repairs”.

TKD Architects is designing the renovated buildings, which will unify the two Belvoir Street Theatre buildings, one housing the main theatre and the other used for warehousing.

As part of the plans, new lifts will improve accessibility and there will be revamped performance and rehearsal spaces as well as a new entrance lobby at Elizabeth Street with an accompanying exhibition space.

It will engage better with public spaces with prominent new frontages. The introduction of a “modest” vertical addition will accommodate a future commercial office tenancy. 

The offices will be leased to a tenant “who has good synergy” with Belvoir Street Theatre, creating a hub for cultural and creative uses. 

Belvoir Street Theatre Ltd would use the project to provide versatile working spaces for the creative industries, it said, and create future income streams through a greater range of spaces available for arts and creative industries.

Since acquiring the building, the company has only been able to make “minor and piecemeal renovations”.

Other options were considered but would only continue this theme and allow the rest of the building to deteriorate further, it said.

▲ A render of the revamped Belvoir, housed in a 1920s warehouse building at Surry Hills, designed by TKD Architects.

The costs to maintain the building could be more than the rental returns in the medium to long term, it admitted, and a ‘business-as-usual’ approach “will ultimately lead to the long-term decline of the Belvoir Street Theatre as one of Australia’s pre-eminent theatre companies. This is a project to safeguard the next generation of theatre participants”.

The theatre is about 700m from Central Station and close to the Surry Hills Light Rail stop in the Sydney city fringe, an area “known for accommodating a thriving, regionally significant cluster of creative sector business, arts and cultural enterprises”, the development application said. 

The 1920s warehouse building that houses Belvoir was a glass factory before becoming the Nimrod Theatre in the 1970s.

According to Arts Projects Australia, the old Nimrod Theatre was saved from demolition by more than 600 Australian and New Zealand arts and entertainment professionals in the 1980s, including Nicole Kidman, Judy Davis, Gillian Armstrong, Sam Neill and Dame Joan Sutherland, when it was renamed the Belvoir St Theatre. 

Since then, actors including Geoffrey Rush, Cate Blanchett and Jacqueline McKenzie have worked with the theatre company.