TEN years after a facade of the historic YMCA building in the city was re-erected at Loftus, the Sydney Tramway Museum still needs about $300,000 to complete the project.
Progress on filling the shell of a new four-storey visitor and education centre behind the facade depends largely on the number of offenders with building skills who come before the courts and are given community service orders.
Museum chairman Howard Clark said they had been fortunate in the past six months that some bricklayers were assigned to the project and 8000 bricks had been laid.
Mr Clark said a developer had paid to remove the facade from its Bathurst Street site and re-erect it brick by brick at Loftus.
The museum has spent $500,000 from donations by members and supporters on the building behind the facade but still needs about $300,000.
Mr Clark said the required funds couldn't be obtained from admission fees.
"Of every dollar we take through the gate, 55¢ goes on insurance," he said.
"If we were in a rural or regional area we would have a good chance of getting some government funding for tourism, but not here."
Mr Clark, who has been the museum chairman for 20 years, was behind the relocation.
A partner in the accounting firm Coopers and Lybrand, he worked across the road from the YMCA building, which stood at the corner of Pitt and Bathurst streets.
Mr Clark said that when a developer sought to demolish the building, Sydney City Council discovered it had mistakenly protected the Pitt Street facade, erected in 1908, with a preservation order, but not the Bathurst Street frontage, built earlier in 1887.
"The only thing the council could do was put an order on it that if it was removed it had to be re-erected," he said.
"I wrote to Frank Sartor, who was the Lord Mayor at that time, saying it would be ideal for the streetscape at the museum.
"We had just built the shell of our new building and the facade was the perfect height for it."
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