Running between Darlinghurst Road and Orwell Street, Llankelly Place doesn’t yell hip inner city life. More cheap commercial real estate. It’s the sort of place where someone’s peeled back the security grill on a window, then the metal below, and then punched through the window – and the proprietors have just left it that way.

Jo Holder’s Cross Arts has opened a new project space on the place. The franchise-ready hot-dog/sausage emporium on the corner of Llankelly Place and Darlinghurst Road is gone, replaced by gelato shop (Stella) that seems to already be up for lease (with all equipment for sale). Down the other end is the Doma beer cafe.

Halfway down the place is a huge new $60m Frank Stanisic designed development, the Village Centre. It opens late January, 2010, though it’s tucked behind security fences for the moment. With a Harris Farm market and 16 other retailers, including the one providore missing in the neighbourhood, a fishmonger, it’s a potential catalyst for the place.

It’s the highest density urban neighbourhood in the country, and it’s loaded with a mixed residential, entertainment and increasingly business focus, so balancing competing demands must be challenging. But does the council even have the resources to support this kind of growth?

Llankelly Place features a series of striking light installations, designed by Peter McGregor (below pic taken from MW Architects‘s website) – the light screens shift slowly from red on Darlinghurst Road to green at the Springfield Gardens. But since installation, the light bulbs have rarely been replaced.

I know it’s probably quite, ahem, noughties to talk about laneway culture – and in Australia, it suggests a bit of a defensive Melbourne-Sydney thing. But really, laneway culture is part of high density city life, and that fine resolution street life is really missing in Sydney.

Liquorice.

Signor Palumbo saw my eyes light up as I spied the new tub. He confessed that this was batch no. 3 of liquorice, but that it had indeed taken 3 attempts to perfect. First it was too aniseedy, then too sweet.

Now, by God it is truly creamy and altogether sensational.