After more than three years work in development, Florence Street is lately living up to her name.
The street has been reborn with the gorgeous spring blooms of 2019.
In 2016 it was decided the old street was long past the need for a major facelift, and since then the region has been transformed from a rather tatty old local service street into one of the city’s highlights.
In a combined effort between local and state governments, along with close co-operation with inner-city traders the historic street has been reborn as a river of palm-trees and flowers.
The project came about as part of a concerted campaign to rethink the form and function of that part of the city which has traditionally been at the heart of local commerce and community activities.
More than $5 million has been spent during the upgrade, which has included refurbishing groundwater and drainage, removing the old power lines which once ran between a chain of stobie poles. And, of course bringing a sea of natural colour and shade to the street.
Given that Florence Street took more than 90 years of local debate and community agitation towards the old Port Pirie Corporation before it was sealed with bitumen in 1939, three years for the upgrade seems pretty impressive.
The street was originally “top-dressed” with slag from the local smelters, with tar used to form a footpath.
In a sign of how different priorities were in the early 20th Century, the Corporation voted in 1913 to cut down trees that were interfering with telephone lines.
These days the street breathes in the new life of a line of palms and flowerbeds.
