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It’s been more than 30 years since Bob Hudson sang about the mating habits of young Newcastle males who “drive down Hunter Street in their hot FJ Holdens with chrome plated grease nipples and double reverse overhead twin cam door handles.”
In the intervening years the former Steel City has become a booming, sophisticated metropolis, and Hunter Street is evolving with it. 670 Hunter is one of the first of a wave of premium-quality commercial buildings to be located in the inner city’s West End, a precinct long overdue for redevelopment. The six-storey building primarily houses a polyclinic operated by the Hunter New England Heath Service, bringing together a variety of medical services that were scattered over the city. The clinics occupy three levels, with two storeys of commercial office spaces above, offering spectacular views to the city and the nearby harbour. The ground level also has retail tenancies.
The designers were presented with a trifecta of demands: it had to fit in a heritage context, and within a reasonably tight budget, and achieve a four-and-a-half Star AGBR rating (Australian Building Greenhouse Rating), a mandatory requirement for government tenancy of new buildings. | 
