Covid-19: How the Adelaide CBD can bounce back from the pandemic
Covid emptied out Adelaide’s CBD as office workers fled to the suburbs, students and tourists disappeared. In a post-pandemic world, how can the city recover its vibrancy?
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The sandwich shop of Rino and Shirley Rendina is now boarded up. For 14 years this was their life. Six days a week, 10 hours a day. But no more. Last month they closed the shop, handed back the keys and walked away. The only thing they had left was debt.
The Rendinas don’t pretend running Daily Bread in the City Cross shopping centre in the Adelaide CBD was ever easy. But Covid rendered it impossible.
“It’s been a fairly stressful few months or year because Covid has really killed us,” Rino says.
Like any small business there had been ups and downs. The early years were fruitful. They had eight staff members and sometimes 500 customers a day. But there were also struggles. Over the years, they had to sell two family homes to pay the bills and keep up with the rent. Even as sales were dropping, the rent was rising by about 4 per cent a year. But they got by.
Covid changed the equation. Revenue fell by 40 per cent from pre-pandemic levels. There were as few as 150 customers some days. By the end there was only one staff member left.
They are far from alone. In City Cross alone there are half a dozen empty shops. Each with their own tale of struggle. Across the CBD, many more small businesses have hit the wall and empty shops dot all the city’s main streets. Even more are wondering how much longer they can survive.
The problem’s easy enough to diagnose. Lockdowns. Then official directions from the state government for office workers to stay at home. No international students. No tourists from overseas or interstate.
The CBD emptied out. Even major hotel chains are considering mothballing their properties because there are no tourists or corporate visitors. And quiet streets means quiet business for the Rendinas and the rest.
The big question is what happens next for Adelaide’s cultural and business heart? Will all those workers who fled to the suburbs in fear of Covid stay there or return? Will they decide the flexibility of working from home is better than the daily trudge into the office? And those that do come back: what kind of CBD will they find? More of the same? Or is this the perfect time to re-imagine what is possible for Adelaide?
There are those who believe all those missing workers will return to the CBD. Premier Steven Marshall is optimistic office workers will again populate the city. “It’s not going to be immediate (the return),” he says. “But yes, I definitely do (believe workers will come back).”
Others are not so sure. Some agree with the premier that the future of Adelaide’s central business district remains bright, but that through necessity and invention it’s going to have to adapt and evolve to remain relevant.
Most believe the era of the Monday-to-Friday, 9-5 office worker chained to a desk is dead. That the working revolution ushered in by the necessities imposed by Covid has shown that it’s technologically feasible and possibly even desirable for many workers to work from home for at least part of the week.
Studies have been published showing working from home is more productive than the office. No office worker misses the daily commute.
There is a lot of talk that offices will evolve into shared social spaces used intermittently for meetings and brainstorming sessions. Or they will be used entirely differently. Maybe converted to low-cost housing.
Big companies which were the staple of the office blocks are re-evaluating their approach. Telstra had around 1000 employees in the CBD and while it has no plans to reduce office space, working habits have radically changed.
Telstra’s SA regional general manager Mark Bolton says employees nationally are working from home, on average 3.7 days a week, up from 1.7 days pre-pandemic, and that’s not going to change.
“Where someone lives should no longer be a limitation to the work they undertake,” Bolton says.
“So, nationally, we’ve moved to a ‘location agnostic’ approach for all office and contact centre-based roles.” Simon Kuestenmacher, co-founder of The Demographics Group, says before the pandemic about 4.4 per cent of employees worked from home. At the height of the pandemic this increased to 50 per cent. Kuestenmacher predicts this will settle to around 15 per cent when the pandemic finally recedes.
“It turns out that many people like it,” he says. “So therefore, it is hard once you grant a privilege, if you will, to a population, it’s hard to take that back.”
Kuestenmacher says CBDs were always set up to serve business, with the needs of people a distant second.
“The reason why we cluster jobs in the CBD in the first place is because it’s good for the jobs, it’s not good for the workers,” he says. But the coronavirus is now changing that power dynamic.
“The idea right now is if you have been in your job for five years, you should just quit, get another job because you’ll get a higher pay.” At the moment employers have little ability to attract workers from overseas or interstate, so locals have more bargaining power. If they want to work from home, and their current employer won’t allow it, then find one who does, is Kuestenmacher’s advice.
Trevor Cooke is chief executive of Commercial & General, one of SA’s biggest developers. Projects on the C&G books include 88 O’Connell St and SAHMRI2. Cook’s view is that the pandemic has made the rate of change quicker, whether that’s working from home or the take up of technology.
“Covid has accelerated certain trends, which were inexorable in any event, and not necessarily a catalytic change in and of itself,” he says.
Cooke uses himself as an example. He used to be on the road 250 days a year. “Sydney, Hong Kong, Beijing, Singapore, Tokyo. That was my milk run,” he says.
Now, through necessity, everyone has become more comfortable with virtual meetings. It means Adelaide can market itself as a place where the lifestyle is attractive, but the work can still get done, just not necessarily while sitting in an office.
“I can get my kids into a private school and all that, but at the same time engage on a national and regional, in fact, global platform. And breaking down that barrier I think has been really important.
“That’s where I think our comparative advantage as a city lies. And so, we should be thinking more about how do we compete with Amsterdam and Atlanta for that talent, more so than Sydney or Melbourne.”
Cooke says one advantage for Adelaide in the pandemic has been the slowing of young talent and brains leaving the city and seeking their fortunes elsewhere.
“If I took Adelaide Oval, and filled it up with 18-to-35 year olds in 2009, by 2019 there wasn’t one of them left.”
The economic importance of the CBD to South Australia is vast. According to the Adelaide City Council, which includes North Adelaide, the city’s gross regional product is $20.2bn, accounting for 18.2 per cent of the gross state product.
The Council says the city hosts 15,251 businesses, which employ more than 142,000 people. It has a residential population of more than 26,000 and has an aspiration of building that to more than 48,000 by 2041.
Premier Steven Marshall says he is an optimist by nature and shoots down suggestions the CBD is struggling, although he concedes it’s a tough time for many small businesses. He also points to the government’s support for the CBD through travel vouchers and the #gototownprogram.
He points to the development of Lot Fourteen on the old RAH site, which he says will eventually deliver 7000 mostly hi-tech jobs. He talks about the neighbouring Aboriginal cultural centre, of the new $660m indoor arena further down North Terrace, of expanding the festival season beyond “Mad March”, of the redevelopment of the Central Market Arcade.
He points to tech companies such as Google, Amazon and LVX that have opened in Adelaide. To the city being home to the Australian Space Agency.
And, of course, The Economist magazine declaring Adelaide as the third most liveable city in the world.
“I’m extraordinarily optimistic about the CBD,” Marshall says.
The Property Council is also upbeat. It says a recent survey estimates that office occupancy is up to 80 per cent of pre-pandemic levels.
But others see this point in time as the perfect opportunity to reinvent the CBD. To re-imagine Adelaide. To acknowledge that life won’t ever go back to normal. But that in the meantime it’s vital that the CBD still remains as the city’s cultural, intellectual, sporting, business and entertainment hub. That this is the time to try new ideas. Some that may work, some that won’t. To finally decide what we do with the parklands. How to bring the best out of the riverbank? Can we prioritise people over cars and pollution? What can we do to improve safe cycling? What about making life easier for pedestrians? What about the city’s squares? What can we learn from cities such as Austin, Copenhagen, Amsterdam and even Paris, New York and Barcelona?
A new attitude may stop years of debates about whether, for example, a $6m east-west bike track should be built across the city, before being abandoned by the Adelaide City Council.
Malcolm Smith is Australasian cities leader for global advisory design firm Arup. He has worked with the Greater London Authority on its “meanwhile uses” strategy, which looks to give new life to vacant properties and spaces.
Smith says planning processes need to be “a little more agile”.
“Planning is a really important tool to making good places because you can’t just have a free-for-all. But we plan for what I call ‘end-state use’,” he says. End-state use being a fancy term for permanent. So, in the case of the bikeway, it was seen as eternal.
“So, would the cycleway example have been more interesting if they’d said, ‘Look, we’re going to test it for 12 months and it’s not permanent’. So people go ‘OK, let’s give it a go’,” he says. “Then there’s capacity to respond to something that we’ve seen, instead of responding to something that everyone thinks might happen. It’s a really interesting evolution of planning, both in terms of agility, but also temporality in the way in which a city is made.”
Adelaide has never been short of ideas of how it could redefine itself. It’s a process that started with William Light and has been worked on by every generation since.
Ten years ago, the famed Danish urban designer Jan Gehl wrote a 162-page report on Adelaide. Gehl has worked around the world, his ambition is to make cities more people friendly. He helped transform Copenhagen and has been important in how New York City and Melbourne have evolved.
His Adelaide report is full of fascinating ideas that mostly have been filed away in the too-hard basket. Gehl made recommendations on how to better integrate the Torrens with the city, how to improve connections to the parklands, how to make the city centre more pedestrian friendly.
Under “quick wins”, Gehl lists ideas such as using Grenfell St solely for public transport, lunchtime closures for Rundle St, Gouger St, Gawler Place and Pirie St. He also thought Rundle St and Gouger St should be closed to traffic on Saturdays.
There were other ideas. To take down the stone wall around Government House on North Terrace and turn that space into a public garden. To remove car access to the five squares of Adelaide, and take car parking to the fringes. To restrict King William St through the middle of the city to one traffic lane in each direction and widen the footpaths.
It’s radical stuff that would transform the city. It would take a lot of political will and has mostly been ignored to date by Labor and Liberal governments as well as the Adelaide City Council.
Premier Marshall says “we’re here to advance our state and optimise our performance – not to change society’s behaviour. That’s a much bigger task.”
Scott Hawken is director of planning and urban design at Adelaide University’s school of architecture and built environment and laments “the city has forgotten some of the advice that we’ve been sitting on for a long time from people like Jan Gehl”.
“A lot of changes have been happening in cities around Australia and around the world and Adelaide really hasn’t done much during Covid, in terms of urban design and regeneration,” he says.
Hawken says Adelaide needs to be a little braver. That we need not fear change because cities are always “dynamic”. Cities such as Amsterdam and Copenhagen which have transformed themselves, in part by slashing car numbers in the city centre, had to overcome initial opposition. Amsterdam is banning petrol and diesel cars from its city centre by 2030, has removed 10,000 car parks and has closed streets to make it more difficult to drive through it.
Hawken believes we have to do more to develop precincts within the CBD that attract people and businesses to one area. Lot Fourteen and the biomedical area with the RAH and SAHMRI are starts but more needs to be developed. The biomedical precinct in particular feels more like a collection of buildings than an area with heart and soul and is disconnected from the rest of North Terrace. Hawken proposes the development of an arts precinct between the Adelaide Railway Station and Hindley St, with small theatres and performance spaces being created.
He is also taken by the idea of the “superblock” concept that has been developed in Barcelona. The concept is to create an “urban village”, where streets are closed off to encourage residents to walk, cycle and shop in the immediate local area. Children could cycle and walk to parks without fear of traffic.
“I think it will be very controversial in Adelaide because people love their cars here,” he says.
But one area of the city he believes it could work is in Hindley St West, around the University of South Australia campus. With students as potential residents, bars, cafes and shops would flock in. It could become its own little village.
University of SA vice chancellor David Lloyd is a fan of the idea. He says he would have no problem if Hindley St West is closed to traffic. There have already been moves to lift the reputation of the west end of town. The word West was officially added to Hindley St, to distinguish it from the entertainment strip. New pavers and traffic slowing measures were introduced to make it more pedestrian friendly, but Lloyd says there is more to be done.
“The next logical step is to work on closing it off,” he says. “There are probably, we can count them, there must be 10 ways to get across the city without coming down that street.”
The pandemic has slowed progress as revenue has drained away with no international students, but Lloyd’s ambition remains to close down UniSA’s campus in the east end of the city, as well as its Magill facility, to consolidate at City West and at Mawson Lakes. It’s likely to add another 5000 students to the west end campus. But that’s at least another three years away. International students, which account for more than 20 per cent of the student population, will need to return and stabilise the university’s finances first.
The fate of the university’s property at the other end of North Terrace is still to be decided. It could be swallowed up by either Adelaide University or the emerging Lot Fourteen. Lloyd says the century-old red brick Brookman Building, which sits on the corner of North Terrace and Frome Rd, could even be converted into a hotel.
Everyone seems to agree more people living in the city is a good idea.
Marisa and Peter Cheese are certainly on board. The retired married couple are originally from Melbourne but moved to Adelaide with their two daughters in 1992 and have lived in Highbury and Magill. Their original thought was to move to the beach.
They investigated properties from Brighton to Semaphore but couldn’t find anything they liked. Then the idea came up of living in the city.
They found a place in a new development on South Terrace and will move in next year. Marisa is 67 and Peter is 75 and both are excited about the prospect of walking to cafes and restaurants, visiting museums and the Central Market. The buzz of the Festival and the Fringe.
“We’ve been here all these years, and we really haven’t explored the city,” Marisa says. “Our neighbours are the Park Lands and we will be on the fifth floor, and the views are going to be just amazing to see the Park Lands, and the hills, it’s going to be a beautiful lifestyle.”
Lord Mayor Sandy Verschoor is keen for more people to move into the city. She says it’s important the city has a diverse population.
“Younger people and professionals, students, hospitality workers, key workers, teachers, nurses, it’s convenient, it’s great food, it’s easy to get around the cities very, very easy. You know scooter, train, walk. They don’t need a car. And there is the cultural life that they want,” she says.
The Adelaide City Council has also started its Reignite Adelaide program to attract more people to the CBD, offering free car parking, new outdoor dining areas, street parties and entertainment. Verschoor believes workers will embrace the new flexibility but still come into the city. She talks about office workers possibly having staggered starts, so public transport is not so crowded, of more flexible trading hours and programs such as Reignite Adelaide adding an impetus to the CBD.
In the longer term she wants Adelaide to embrace a “clean, green image” and acknowledges “unfortunately, we’ve regressed with Covid. We’ve gone backwards in terms of people being car dependent, when we were making great traction in terms of moving forward”.
In a post-Covid era, more emphasis will be placed on widening footpaths to make social distancing easier, further attempts will be made to make cycling around town simpler and safer. For example, the bike lane into the city from the east, which runs along North Terrace, expires after it crosses Hackney Rd.
Verschoor wants better connections with nearby councils and is in favour of extending the tram network to Norwood and North Adelaide.
Then there are the Park Lands. A topic that excites passions in such a way that very little ever seems to change. The result being much of the Park Lands is a museum to dying grass, rather than as a destination that people want to visit.
Verschoor says she is in favour of a reinvigoration of the Park Lands.
“It is not about, we can’t touch that blade of grass, it’s actually how do we make the Park Lands, how do we engage people in the Park Lands in a way that they feel connected to it,” she says.
The mayor says much has already been done in building outdoor gyms and running and cycling paths but concedes there is more to do. Verschoor is also chair of the Park Lands
Authority and says there will be more focus on individual parks and how to liven them up.
Urban Development Institute SA chief executive Pat Gerace is another who believes we need to do more to breathe life into the Park Lands and makes the point: “It’s not a tourist attraction. No one has ever touted it as a tourist attraction. Ever.”
Gerace says he’s not advocating for large-scale commercial development in the Park Lands but that it should be possible to build attractions within the confines of the Park Lands that will attract people in the city.
“What would be wrong with having a waterpark area in the Park Lands somewhere?” he asks. But he’s not confident an initiative like that would be allowed.
“If someone decided they wanted to just pave a small part of the Park Lands to put up a hotdog stand so kids can have parties, all hell would break loose.”
Gerace believes local and state governments need to invest further in the CBD.
“The government could certainly, if the government was serious about the CBD, make investments and they can incentivise the City Council,” he says. “But again the question would be: If you really want to put more people in the city would another school make more of an impact than another stadium?” He also believes more must be done to improve safety in the Park Lands, particularly at night, as well as the cleanliness of the city.
Former mayor Stephen Yarwood says Adelaide should aim to be “fun, cool, green and safe”. On his list of improvements are wider footpaths, 40km/h speed limit, more zebra crossings, more trees, more public art and more infrastructure and programming for the squares.
“The city needs to be more liveable for more residents and visitors,” he says. Visitors should want to stay longer and residents not want to leave.”
There is no shortage of ideas big and small to revive the Adelaide CBD. The large LED screens on the Bradley Building on North Terrace are not allowed to carry moving images. That seems like a lost opportunity to some. Business SA chief executive Martin Haese has proposed a 50m natural pool on the Torrens.
The world has changed and Adelaide is going to have to change as well. Even if that means making difficult decisions.
At UniSA, Lloyd is up for the challenge.
“We’re going to have to step into the discomfort of what activation means, and some of the vibrancy comes from people actually doing things and pushing the envelope.”
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