Ghost Arcade, Compass Centre, Bankstown

The Compass Centre, Bankstown, is full of mostly empty shops with yellow For Lease signs plastered on their windows, turning the place into a ghost arcade. Then again, the Compass Centre has always had the atmosphere of a ghost arcade even when the shops were occupied. In spite of the round downlights lining the ceiling, the arcade has always seemed dark and sepulchral, a gauntlet of shops to be run on the way from Bankstown railway station to Bankstown Square rather than a place for a satisfying shopping experience. I always wondered how the retailers earned any money because most of the people I saw there only seemed to be passing through just like me.

Then I read that the Compass Centre was due to be pulled down and replaced with a new apartment complex. A couple of months ago the entrances to the arcade were closed and I thought the demolition was due to begin. I waited for the hole in the ground to appear and for the cranes to rise. Nothing happened.

When I returned to Bankstown a few weeks ago, I was surprised to see the entrances to the arcade were open again. The arcade was back, but not quite. Now it was even more sepulchral because most of the shops were empty, resembling glass coffins.

Looking online, it seemed that redevelopment had been put on hold due to the decline in the housing market. I found a couple of different artists’ impressions of the replacement Compass Centre, one with glass panelling armouring the sides, and another with wave-like white balconies and a couple of green rooftops. Both designs envisioned public plazas lively with thronging people and one depicted a retail area ornamented with a large advertising screen, funnel structures supporting plants and hard-looking benches where people were sitting, relaxed. I couldn’t help noticing that in the designs of the public areas that the people were young and slim, mostly Anglo, no one pushed prams and only one woman wore a hijab. I had the feeling the artists creating these impressions had never actually been to Bankstown.

These visions of the replacement Compass Centre were ghost designs that may never enter reality, at least not in these incarnations. In the meantime, the current Compass Centre is in limbo, a vacuum waiting to be filled.