The proposed Newcastle Quay development is a colossal disappointment, an outrageous waste of a chance for Newcastle to make its mark.
This is all the fault of our Sydney-obsessed state government, which yet again shows that it simply doesn't take Newcastle seriously.
The site, alongside the harbour near the interchange, has potential that other cities of Newcastle's size would kill for: more than 30,000 square metres of blank-sheet, harbour-front redevelopment land right next to the city centre.
Whatever is built on it should present a spectacle - extravagant display, attention-seeking, a great big bunch of look-at-me.
Instead, the state wants to serve up just a collection of mostly good looking but not very remarkable buildings that will no doubt maximise the return to the Treasury. Yes, it's another case of "Good enough for Newcastle".
This project's main objective should be drawing outsiders' eyeballs to Newcastle and making us beam with pride at our city's centrepiece.
By raising our national or even international profile, it should bring more investment and jobs. Other benefits - a lot of superbly located housing and a lively new commercial district - go without saying; they'd be in there regardless.
In short, it should be an icon, the sort of thing that cities all over the world get when they're trying. One example of such a city is of course Sydney, whose government really tries. The "state" government ensured that the Barangaroo development would be marvellous to behold.
Twenty years ago, Singapore wanted to make a mark. An international competition delivered the eye-catching Marina Bay Sands hotel and casino. In China, cities fall over each other in efforts to get iconic designs.
And in 1956 the NSW government launched an international design competition for its Sydney Harbour site on Bennelong Point - and, oh, what a result it got.
Newcastle, if you don't have ambition for yourself, you can't expect the state government to have it.
That's just how the state should have handled Newcastle Quay - with an international design competition. Such an event is the step that secures an iconic concept; after that, the government finds a developer to build it.
Instead, the state has handled Newcastle Quay with a run-of-the-mill competition at only the developer level, as it might for some important but not super special site somewhere in Sydney.
Attribute no blame to the winner of the competition, Doma Group. Through effort, skill and surely millions in spending, it has won a competition with an offer that met the government's standards. The problem is that those standards were far too low.
The state should immediately halt this project and negotiate to compensate Doma. And it should launch an international design competition for Newcastle Quay.
No, we probably wouldn't get something approaching the spectacle and scale of the 75-floor One Barangaroo tower - but, you know, we might. A developer already wants to build a 44-storey building at Wickham, just across Hannell Street from Newcastle Quay.
Now I can imagine the giggles in government offices in Sydney. "An international design competition? For Newcastle? Who do they think they are?"
That's a big part of our problem. We're not taken seriously.
But here's another big part of our problem. Many Novocastrians will have looked at pictures of the proposed development and thought, "Now that's progress".
Their expectations are too low. Newcastle, if you don't have ambition for yourself, you can't expect the state government to have it.
Let's underline the importance of this site. No such opportunity will come again. Yes, we have other harbourfront sites with potential (for decades, imagining eyes have fallen on Dyke Point), but they're on the wrong side of the water.
Newcastle Quay is the site that is beside our reviving city centre and will indeed extend it to the harbour. It's the one that can finally enliven disappointing Honeysuckle. It's the one with excellent transport connections.
If we waste it, we will never get such a chance again. If we waste it, our successors will be living with our mistake next century.
Mention of Honeysuckle reminds us of the likely dark role of the state Treasury in all this: it wants as much money as it can get from the land at Newcastle Quay, in part because ministers want to spend so much in Sydney.
You see, iconic buildings are much more expensive than those that are merely good looking. Their odd shapes and flashy facades don't come cheap.
The more a developer has to pay for its buildings, the less it can afford to pay for the land. So, in making no demand for creating a Newcastle icon, the state has maximised its sale price.
Yet this also means that we can have a spectacular development if the state lowers its price expectation - all the way to zero, if necessary.
The state has form at Honeysuckle in lifting its land value at the expense of our urban design. By allowing the harbourside blocks there to be too high and too closely spaced, it raised the number of flats in them and the land price that flowed to the Treasury. And it also gave us the reviled concrete canyon of Honeysuckle Drive.
By the way, the state's Hunter and Central Coast Development Corporation, which runs Honeysuckle projects, tells me that creating a landmark was an objective in the Newcastle Quay competition.
Well, if there's a landmark element in the design, I can't see it - unless HCCDC means "creating a landmark mistake".
Newcastle, you have to do something about this. Newcastle Quay shouldn't be a council matter: anything as grand as that should be handled by an attentive state government, but we don't have one of those. So our councils - all the Greater Newcastle councils - should be telling Sydney that this isn't good enough.
Then there are our professionals in urban design.
There can hardly be a Newcastle architect or urban planner who is satisfied with what's come out of the Newcastle Quay competition. Guys, we need you, with the weight of your qualifications, to make a fuss about this.
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