Christopher Pyne: Forget trees and seating, the only thing that can save North Adelaide is development
Christopher Pyne says North Adelaide has been at the centre of a battle between progress and complacency for 30 years – and it’s time for it to be removed from Adelaide City Council. POLL: DO YOU AGREE?
Opinion
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I read recently that the hardworking and prescient deputy lord mayor of Adelaide, Alexander Hyde, had stated that O’Connell and Melbourne streets in North Adelaide need a lift. He’s right.
How many times have we heard this over the past 20 years?
Routinely there is a call for doing something to fill the empty shops and remove the “for lease” signs from what used to be two of the premier shopping, eating and entertainment precincts in Adelaide.
Sometimes these calls for action take the form of suggesting that what O’Connell and Melbourne streets need is new street furniture or the replacement of old trees with new ones (here, the resident Green, Rob Simms, calls for introduced species to be replaced with stringy bark gums, or some such native).
Suggesting that we can return these retail and entertainment strips to their former glory with some new street furniture and plane trees is like telling a friend who asks you if they are dressed appropriately, in Pikachu overalls and running shoes, for a job interview at a law firm, that they look fine “but you might want to change into more sensible footwear”.
The problem with O’Connell and Melbourne streets is not the seats and trees, it’s the lack of economic development and the suffocation of economic activity over three decades.
When I was a callow youth in the 1980s and early ’90s, Melbourne St and its surrounds was a place to go. It was bustling with bars, hotels, restaurants and night clubs.
O’Connell St was open late. Like Melbourne St it was brimming with bars, restaurants, hotels, cafes and places to go.
Not any more. Both streets are operating in second gear. They are a long way from fifth gear.
There are some nice developments in both – The David Roche Collection at Fermoy House, The Lion and the North Adelaide Village.
Luckily for O’Connell St it still has decent hotels like The Oxford and The Archer.
But there is also the gaping reminder of the battle between development versus complacency that is 88 O’Connell St, the old Le Cornu site, which has sat undeveloped for 32 years.
Every time some naive developer has proposed a plan for that property the naysayers have dusted off their anti-development placards and demanded their representatives on the Adelaide City Council stop progress. Complacency has won.
For years, the residents living in the vicinity of Melbourne and O’Connell streets complained about the level of noise coming from revellers having fun in the bars, nightclubs, hotels and restaurants of both places.
Slowly, Melbourne St nightspots were suffocated to the point of threatened species status. Compared to 30 years ago, only a handful are still operating.
The solution to the dreariness of Melbourne and O’Connell streets is development.
Without economic activity, growth, construction, redevelopment and consumers consuming, no amount of new street furniture or landscaping will make the slightest difference.
Other parts of Adelaide have reinvented themselves over the decades and thrive as a result – Prospect Rd, Stirling, Burnside Village, The Parade, Unley and King William roads, the Glenelg foreshore and Henley Square, are just a few that come to mind.
Economic development and the refresh that brings won’t occur while complacency defeats a thirst for development and renewal.
There is a structural fault in the make-up of the Adelaide City Council district.
The Central Business District and the inner-city suburb of North Adelaide are combined. They shouldn’t be.
For too long they have had very different interests.
The voters of North Adelaide are too slow to support change, the ratepayers of the CBD want to see business activity and turnover.
The residents of North Adelaide seem to have a disproportionate say over the development of the city, which should be the jewel in the crown of the state.
They would be better placed in a neighbouring council area that services a similar demographic and geographic area.
North Adelaide borders the City of Prospect and the Town of Walkerville.
It could easily be merged with one of those, with the boundary between the Central Business District and either the new Prospect or Walkerville being the River Torrens.
North Adelaide is chiefly residential. If it had adopted a pro-development position over the past three decades it could rightly claim to be mixed, and therefore it would hold a greater claim to having more in common with the city itself.
For example, if the vision of Con Makris to build a five-star hotel and retail development at 88 O’Connell St had been realised. But as it happens, North Adelaide has more in common with its neighbouring suburbs to the north and north east – Fitzroy, Collinswood, Medindie, Gilberton and Walkerville.
North Adelaide must let go of the city. It’s time to let the Adelaide CBD thrive.