Tour inside Walker Corporation’s Festival Tower, next to Parliament House

Go inside the controversial, 29-storey Festival Tower, being built in the heart of the city next to Parliament House – but could there be a second tower?

Adelaide’s most controversial building, Festival Tower, will soon reach its maximum height as debate intensifies about a second skyscraper squeezed next to Parliament House.

The 29-storey tower is forecast to top out at 115m with a final concrete pour in April or May, making it the seventh-tallest building in Adelaide.

Construction is expected to be completed by the end of 2023. Stage one of the public Festival Plaza redevelopment to the north, next to the Adelaide Festival Centre, is complete and includes paving, water features, grassed areas and artworks.

When The Advertiser toured the site this week, construction had reached the 17th floor of the 2000 sqm site.

The under-construction Walker Corporation’s Festival Tower, between the Adelaide Railway Station and Parliament House.

Parliament House (left) and North Tce buildings (right) as seen from the ground floor of Festival Tower, under construction. Pic Roy VanDerVegt

Planning Minister Nick Champion, to whom developer Walker Corporation has indicated plans were likely to be lodged for a second tower, urged debate about connections to the adjacent 22m-high Parliament House – potentially for MPs’ offices, school group tours, parliamentary staff and community groups.

“Whether it’s a three-storey building (as now approved) or a tower, there’ll be this sort of laneway between the two,” Mr Champion told The Advertiser.

“As it’s currently constructed with the three-storey building, there’s just no interaction between the parliament and that laneway and there’s no exit there. Effectively, the parliament will have its back turned to this building then and vice versa.

The likely site of a second officer tower on the Festival Plaza site, taken from the under-construction Festival Tower. Picture Roy VanDerVegt

At the top of the Walker Corporation’s Festival Plaza tower, with Renewal SA chief executive Chris Menz. Picture: Roy VanDerVegt

“ … But at the moment, there’s more interaction between the parliament and the carpark beneath Festival Plaza, which of course is part of this development, as opposed to the square.

“It just seems to make no sense at all. Parliament has access to the carpark but not access to the square and the building directly behind it.”

Flinders University is the anchor tenant in the Festival Tower, being built just to the northwest of Parliament House under a deal hammered out last November by the previous Liberal government.

This allowed the tower and an associated three-storey retail/entertainment complex to be built on the plaza – bounded by parliament, the Adelaide Festival Centre, Adelaide Casino and King William Rd.

Parliament House and courtyard nestled next to the Festival Tower. Pic Roy VanDerVegt

The deal also granted an extra lease of air space above the three-storey retail complex and a mechanism to allow Walker to request development rights to build a second tower that it has long coveted since being awarded exclusive rights to develop the precinct in 2012.

A five-level, 1646-space underground carpark, developed by Walker, opened in May last year.

Asked previously about a second tower application, a Walker Corporation spokesman said the company was working with the government to “ensure we deliver an exceptional outcome on this important site and one that meets their approval”.