Car Park

The parking bay lines are still there, faded but readable, running across cracked asphalt beneath a roof that has been slowly losing its argument with gravity. Concrete pillars carry the load. Dust and debris cover everything else. Nothing has moved here in a long time. This was the car park attached to the Sundell Holden workshop and service centre at 17 Smith Street, Chatswood East. Sundell Motors Pty Ltd, registered with ASIC on 5 January 1967 under ACN 000 560 770, operated as an authorised Holden dealer on Sydney's North Shore across several decades. The company held Holden dealer code 610 for its Chatswood operation, and at various points ran a multi-branch network that included entities at Pittwater as well as Chatswood. The Smith Street site was the mechanical and service arm of the business, distinct from the showroom the company had previously operated on the Pacific Highway. By 2015, when this photograph was made, the workshop and its car park were already vacant. The building had become an informal surface for street art and graffiti during the years between closure and demolition. The wider context arrived later and publicly. General Motors announced on 17 February 2020 that the Holden brand would be withdrawn from Australia and New Zealand. The ACCC intervened in May 2020 after dealers, including the 185 across the network, raised concerns about the compensation timeline. The Holden brand ceased trading in Australia on 31 December 2020. A Senate inquiry into the manufacturer-dealer relationship reported in March 2021. The Smith Street site was approved for redevelopment in March 2021 under DA-2017/182, an application that had been filed in 2017 and attracted over 700 submissions. The building was demolished around 2021. Woolworths Chatswood East opened on the site on 26 October 2022. What the photograph holds is the interval between those two facts: after the workshop closed, before the demolition crews arrived.