What this elite Adelaide school plans to do with old Sanitarium site at Hackney
A YEAR ago dozens of townhouses were earmarked for Adelaide’s old Sanitarium factory. Today, the site’s future looks very different as a prestigious school gets set to take over the land. Here’s why it wants it.
- New 37-townhouse plan for Hackney Rd’s Sanitarium factory
- It’s happening: Hackney to get its Weet-Bix ‘ghetto’
ST PETER’S College will buy the former Sanitarium site in Hackney to expand its campus, ending speculation the land will be redeveloped for housing.
The school has entered a contract to buy the old Weet-Bix factory, opposite Botanic Park, for an undisclosed price.
It last week said it had “no immediate plans” for the 8000sq m site, but a consultant has told a Norwood, Payneham & St Peters Council meeting the land would be turned into playing fields and a carpark.
The sale will end uncertainty surrounding the land’s future after a plan for dozens of townhouses — described by some residents as a “concrete ghetto” — fell through earlier this year.
At an NP & SP committee meeting consultant Russell Edgecombe, who was working with St Peter’s on the land sale, told councillors and senior staff the school wanted to merge the Sanitarium site with playing fields at its middle and senior campus.
“The idea is to expand the playing fields out towards Hackney Rd,” Mr Edgecombe told the meeting.
“Associated with that would be some carparking, some changerooms and toilets.”
Mr Edgecombe said the proposal was “only conceptual at this stage”, but he ruled out any potential for “high-density” classroom blocks.
He also revealed the school had signed a contract to buy the land in April and had undertaken lengthy investigations into the old factory site, including identifying “some contamination issues … which would require some remedial work”.
A St Peter’s College spokeswoman last week said the former factory site would not be redeveloped in the “foreseeable future”.
The spokeswoman said the land sale was an “rare” opportunity to expand the school’s footprint, given its city-rim location.
Last year, North Adelaide doctor Zachariasz Baran announced plans for 42-townhouses on the site.
But that proposal did not get off the ground after Dr Baran’s $7 million contract with Sanitarium never settled.
Dr Baran last month told the Eastern Courier Messenger that a range of council-imposed conditions had made it too hard for him to develop the site, a claim which was rejected by NP & SP urban planning general manager Carlos Buzzetti.
Cr Sue Whitington was last week “thrilled” to learn of the school’s plans for the site.
“I think it will be an excellent outcome … because a lot of the site will mostly be used as open space,” Cr Whitington told the meeting.
However, Cr Carlo Dottore was disappointed the land would not be used for housing.
“It was a pretty nice spot for residential housing and this will just mean that the city will continue to sprawl into greenfields,” Cr Dottore said.
“The community will be poorer for it.”
The sale is scheduled to settle on November 3.