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Newcastle's former Lady Mayoress says a proposal to move the city's art gallery into the derelict old post office building is unrealistic.
Lord Mayor Jeff McCloy says renovating the post office to accommodate a gallery is a better option than the proposed $21 million redevelopment of the existing art gallery in Laman Street.
The state-owned post office is in disrepair and the site's currently the subject of an Aboriginal land claim.
Cathy Tate has spent years fundraising for the gallery redevelopment and says it is the best option.
"To bring the post office up to gallery level would probably cost as nearly as much to do the redevelopment," she said.
"Two, the space is smaller than the redeveloped space.
"I know it looks like a huge building but when you actually get down to the usable space, it's nowhere near as big as you think it is."
Ms Tate says people need to unite together to make the art gallery redevelopment happen.
"There's $7 million there from the council, " she said.
"And then there's the $1 million from the community, there's the $7 million from the Federal Government.
"Then the last council went to the people and to IPART and said, 'we want to increase the rates by five per cent to do these nine projects', one of which, was the art gallery."
Topics: urban-development-and-planning, local-government, newcastle-2300
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