Blacktown City Centre’s Warrick Lane precinct has officially opened, marking another major milestone for the evolving Western Sydney community.

Transformative landscape and public domain works have seen the tired CBD transform into a rejuvenated, modern metropolitan centre uniting shops, restaurants, and businesses through an integrated public plaza and park reconfiguration.

Working in close collaboration with Blacktown City Council and Cox Architecture, McGregor Coxall’s public realm and landscape approach optimises civic amenity and pedestrian access with the design of a new on-structure public plaza, laneways, and a pocket park.

Paul McAtomney, Landscape Architect and Project Manager at McGregor Coxall’s Sydney Studio, said:

“Blacktown is one of the most culturally-diverse locations in Greater Sydney, so its new premiere public space needed to support the requirements of the whole community while expressing that unique multiplicity through the design narrative,” he said.

The design of the plaza is defined by a grid structure that facilitates pedestrian access and cross-site linkages between the new architecture and existing Main Street, carving out a set of programmed landscape spaces including a rain garden, water play area, raised lawn, play spaces, youth spaces, an event space and multiple seating elements.

“A design toolkit of paving and surface materials, flush and raised kerbs, street furniture, and landscape spaces, as well as the strong urban form of the two new buildings guide vehicular and pedestrian movement and signify the entering of a new and different space,” said McAtomney.

“The pocket park acts as a passive green space that will serve as an area of refuge and respite as the precinct is further developed into a new ACU campus on the northern side of the land parcel.

"Our water management strategy utilises runoff from upper roof levels of flanking buildings, also mitigating stormwater through passive raingardens throughout the precinct."

Working with Blacktown City Council's furniture supplier, McGregor Coxall proposed a range of bespoke furniture elements located throughout the spaces, reinforcing the new public offering.

The carpark features the use of Darug language and First Nations' artworks as sign posting, while First Nations artworks and installations feature throughout the precinct.