CommercialHudson FarrMon 14 Sep 26
Retail Renewal Put Forward for Abandoned Cinemas at Palmerston
Four cinemas that have sat dark in the heart of Darwin’s Palmerston for almost a decade could make way for retail in the first stage of a CBD overhaul.
The wider masterplan would also deliver a boutique hotel and a drive-through food outlet on the site.
Ashford Lamaya Architects director Randal Ashford said the redevelopment, dubbed The Palmerston Junction, was built around finding a low-cost way to bring the redundant cinema building back into use rather than starting again.
“The existing buildings were still in excellent condition and were essentially large giant concrete boxes,” Ashford said.
“The most economical solution was to cut shopfronts into the existing cinema perimeter walls to allow the buildings to be accessed externally [rather than] from a single access point. The glazing shopfronts will provide natural lighting and direct access to external carparking.”
The four-screen cinema, along with an adjoining tenancy formerly occupied by the Palmerston Sports Club and RSL, has been empty since a downturn after the the INPEX gas project ended and the opening of the nearby Gateway Shopping Centre in 2017.
Rather than demolish the structure, the plans filed with the Palmerston Division of the Development Consent Authority carve the existing floorplate into eight smaller commercial tenancies, each with its own street-facing entry, awning and glazed shopfront cut through the old cinema walls. Vertical grow walls and awnings are planned across the refurbished building.
The cinema conversion is the first of three stages proposed for the 1.36ha site, on the corner of Temple Terrace and Roystonea Avenue. Also retained as part of the initial stage are the existing Top End Mental Health office and a bar that continue to trade from the eastern end of the building.
Later stages would build on the reactivated retail floorplate. Stage two proposes a dual-lane drive-through, confirmed as to be tenanted by Guzman y Gomez, on the site’s Temple Terrace and Roystonea Avenue corner.
It is a corner Ashford said he had long considered as one of Palmerston’s most under used.
“I always thought this undeveloped corner was a wasted opportunity—there has only ever been a carpark to one of Palmerston’s busiest intersections,” Ashford said. “We targeted GyG as we thought they would be the perfect business for this location.”
Stage three would comprise a three-storey, 36-suite boutique hotel fronting Maluka Street and designed to sit alongside the neighbouring Rydges.
“The design brief was to develop a boutique hotel that would complement the mixed-use Palmerston Junction precinct and that would work with the next door Rydges; not compete with it as a large national hotel offering,” Ashford said.
The Palmerston Junction rebrand leans on the site’s position at what Ashford called the city’s only true four-way intersection; a corner he expects to get busier as the nearby Farrar West and Palmerston Central developments progress and Roystonea Avenue is duplicated.
The application, prepared by Sheridan Consulting, seeks a series of variations to the Northern Territory Planning Scheme, including car parking rates, parking layout, loading bays and landscaping provisions that apply across the Zone CB precinct.
