Clover’s Town Hall Square would long outlast the small-minded fools trying to kill it

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Pushing into her third decade as lord mayor, Clover Moore still has plenty of fans in Sydney – although I’m no longer really one of them.

Moore has been a trailblazer as the city’s first popularly elected female lord mayor, amassing nearly a quarter of a million first-preference votes over six elections. She has helped make Sydney a much better place to live and work, and has been a role model for women in political leadership.

But the 80-year-old has stayed too long, and failed to orchestrate anything resembling a succession plan. Hubris and complacency have also crept in, gifting her haters something of substance to complain about. She is notoriously prickly about criticism. And her continued flirtation with the idea of running for a fresh term in 2028 only serves to highlight how her record-breaking reign has clouded her judgment.

However, none of that means Moore’s latest project, the $94 million Town Hall Square redevelopment , is the dud its opponents paint it to be.

I have watched in amazement over recent months as well-organised groups plot to kill the City of Sydney’s four-decade-long plan to turn a block opposite Sydney Town Hall into much-needed open space.

The campaign has been led by the Business Sydney lobby outfit, retail giant Woolworths, the “Shoppies” union and Planning Minister Paul Scully, with The Daily Telegraph stepping up as their megaphone. The vested-interest alliance has sprouted all sorts of arguments as selfish as they are short-sighted.

The lack of pushback to this effort is astounding. Sensing the risk of the project succumbing to pressure, the council has largely stayed quiet in the hope that the noise will just go away.

Moore’s plan would see seven council-owned buildings demolished between George and Pitt streets, including one housing a Woolworths supermarket, and replaced by a plaza featuring 30 native trees, a water installation, seating and lighting. The views the square will open up of three sandstone gems – Town Hall, St Andrew’s Cathedral and the Queen Victoria Building – will be breathtaking.

If you listen to the haters, you might think the fate of Sydney’s economy rests on this 5000-square-metre block – even though it represents just 0.17 per cent of the size of the Sydney CBD. You might also think Moore dreamt up the whole thing yesterday as some kind of retirement vanity project, when the opposite is true. The City of Sydney has been planning the park since 1985, and the project enjoys largely bipartisan support on the council. Expensive? Sure. But the council believes it can deliver the whole thing for $94 million – well down on its budget of $150 million.

There was similar pearl-clutching about a decade ago when the City of Sydney council and then-Coalition state government pushed ahead with building light rail down a pedestrianised George Street. It has long been forgotten that NSW Labor – which is leading the charge against the Town Hall Square idea – opposed the light rail project, claiming it would be a “disaster” and function like the “Berlin Wall”, dividing east and west.