Gretel Packer and her money bags have saved the historic Metro-Minerva Theatre

Billionaire philanthropist Gretel Packer has swooped in to save the historic Metro-Minerva Theatre.
Packer and her team plan to restore the Minerva Theatre to its former glory as a 1000 live theatre for performing arts.
The local Potts Point community support the decision and are hoping this brings some necessary character back to King Cross.
READ MORE: These new Sydney features are pulling the Harbour City into a new era.

Although Australian billionaire Gretel Packer, daughter of media mogul Kerry Packer, recently stepped down from her role as board member for Sydney Theatre Company, the long-time patron of the arts is clearly not done supporting stage. Following last year’s surprise purchase of an art-deco post office in Edgecliff, she has posted up $25.85 million to purchase the historic Metro-Minerva theatre in Sydney’s Potts Point.

Despite it falling further than disrepute in recent years, the sightly art-deco theatre—a shoe-in if Wes Anderson ever wanted to set a film in Sydney—is about the be given a new lease on life via Packer’s company Sacred Firebird, which purchased the building from developer Central Element.

The previous owners planned to turn the theatre into a 63-room luxury boutique hotel with an additional 250-seat auditorium and dedicated cabaret rooms. And yet that plan was bitterly opposed by the specially formed Metro-Minerva Theatre Action Group, comprising local small business owners and citizens who would much rather see the 1000-seat theatre’s future align with its glory days.

*An archival photo showing a packed Minerva Theatre in 1939 (photo: State Library of NSW / Max Dupain).*

The art deco gem that time forgot

Opened in 1939, the Minerva Theatre has pushed through a dizzying amount of booms, busts and makeovers. It’s been everything from a film theatre to a live theatre, all the way to an open-plan food market. In the 80s, it became the head office for George Miller’s Kennedy Miller Productions before the Mad Max director sold to the Abacus Property Group in 2019.

Abacus palmed it off to Central Element in 2021, starting a three-year war between the new leaseholder and the local community that resulted in over 178 individual submissions, 1799 petition signatories and 21 responses from organisations opposed to turning the theatre into a hotel.

On December 18, 2020, the Metro Minerva was listed on the State Heritage Register, although this didn’t stop Central Element’s development proposal from being approved. Yet despite winning the war against locals, the developers shocking placed the building back on the market, just weeks after planners gave it the plans a green light.

*The Minerva Theatre shouldered much of Potts Point’s glamorous personality in the 1940s (photo: State Library of NSW).*

What will Packer do with the Minerva building?

Such a building would be held in high regard in architecturally-rich cities like Los Angeles and Miami, yet for Sydney the Metro-Minerva has been derelict for years. Packer’s purchase comes as welcome news to the local community, with Duncan McNab of the Metro-Minerva Action Group stating that the welcome news could “bring some magic back to the area.”

“Bottom line, everyone I’ve spoken to really loves the idea of the theatre coming back. And that includes the theatre producers… and the local people of Potts Point and the broader Sydney,” McNab told the ABC.

Restoring a theatre can be a costly exercise, but Sydney has clearly been in need for a substantial new theatre in a very long time. Even Don Harwin, the former NSW minister for heritage and for the arts has stated that it cane take up to three years for producers to book a show simply because there are not enough theatres in the Harbour City, a significant point considering the state government is looking to bring in more world-class arts and theatre productions.

“I really believe this can be reopened as a working theatre, and work with other theatres in Sydney and other capital cities to ensure we have a much broader range of theatre that’s seen in Australia,” said the former MP.

“It will be so good for the area,” stated a Facebook user in the Potts Pointer community group. “We just now need the restaurants to open later.”

As reported by AFR, Packer and her team will spend the next six months putting together a plan to restore the 85-year-old art deco theatre as as working theatre, branded with its original name: Minerva.

We’re still a long a way away from the Minerva Theatre reopening, with reports stating that the remodelling could take up to three years.

*Rowe Street was a beloved feature of Sydney before it was absorbed into the plaza underneath MLC Centre in the early 70s (photo: Instagram).*

Does Sydney care about heritage?

Sydney has many heritage buildings. It used to have much more.

Is demolition and redevelopment a blight that muddies Sydney’s charm and destroys our sense of place? The city’s mix of Georgian, Victorian, Art Deco, modernist and industrial architecture is responsible for much of its character, so protecting our anachronistic gems has always been a great point of interest, and a seething point of tension between the community and government.

Such notable landmarks like the Rural Bank of New South Wales and Melbourne-esque Rowe Street are amongst the major architectural features Sydney has lost to modern developments in previous decades.

The fact that Central Element’s proposal was eventually approved has been taken as some as “proof” that Sydney doesn’t value cultural preservation as much as one-of-one cities like New Orleans and New York, and yet the Harbour City’s attempt to align itself with more touristic powerhouses (such as New York) doesn’t seem nearly as viable without a stronger, more protective focus on heritage.

After all, the world’s best cities offer visitors the chance to travel through many different time periods and personalities just by simply walking around.