Crown and Anchor Hotel victory should inspire all South Australians | Peter Goers

Whoever heard of a developer agreeing not to wreck a beloved historical landmark, writes Peter Goers.

At last heritage is sexy. Out with the new and in with the old.

Or, rather, in with the old and up with the new. The Crown and Anchor Hotel is saved. Hosanna in the highest!

The Singapore developer, Wee Hur Holdings, gets 10 extra storeys in order to house even more foreign students in dog boxes.

Will this historic decision help save other historic buildings? Let’s hope so.

It has created a precedent and is a masterstroke from Premier Peter Malinauskas.

He achieved the hitherto impossible by pleasing the developer (and developers are always pleased by being able to build higher and make more money) and mollified the heroically vocal, determined and cranky Save the “Cranker” supporters.

This is a victory for heritage – the social fabric of our city – and, of course, the developer.

TCrown and Anchor proprietor Tom Skipper with Cranker supporter group members, Liberty Li, Dan Bogan Kirk, and Evan Morony. Picture: Dean Martin

The supporters of the “Cranker” even had Coopers Brewery on their side with a special “Save the Cranker Draught” – and no government could argue with Coopers.

We are no longer the City of Churches or even the City of Pubs.

We are the City of Foreign Student Accommodation and the City of Underused Office Buildings and Underused Bike Lanes. This makes a popular hotel and important music venue even more crucial.

The Cranker is deliciously louche.

It’s for everyone and it’s not as arch and self-conscious as, say, the Exeter Hotel. The Cranker brings people to the city.

Hotels are closing. Running a pub is a tough game. We need the Cranker and it is a gloriously down-at-heels, sticky carpet monument to real people and a much-loved old pub.

It will have to close for two years (maybe more) but it will return, preserved for all time for and by those who love it. Bravo!

Simon Brown at Sunday’s Save the Cranker Rally at Parliament House last Sunday. Picture: RoyVphotography

A sign at the first Save the Cranker rally in Adelaide on Sunday, April 28. Picture: Matt Loxton

Saving heritage buildings is generally a case of fail again, fail better.

I’ve fought and generally lost many battles to save heritage buildings which makes this victory even sweeter. This is a welcome about-face from a Labor government which merrily vetoed heritage listing and allowed historic buildings to be razed – Union Hall (one of Australia’s greatest theatres) and Maughan Church (Australia’s only modernist cathedral which could have easily become the concert hall Adelaide so desperately needs).

The Cranker was to be reduced to a facade on another black glass monolith. Heritage facades are dwarfed by what’s behind them and they remain a painful, useless reminder of what was lost.

We’ve all enjoyed ogling Paris recently and the vast, gorgeous architectural heritage of that beautiful city has long since been preserved. Imagine if it was all facades on hideous modern buildings.

Developers fear and loathe heritage, lobby against it and go to great lengths to diminish it.

The beautiful old neoclassical AMP Building (corner of North Tce and King William St) has had its beautiful Carrara marble facade clad twice in the past 15 years, presumably to avoid heritage listing.

The Festival Centre is now boxed in by hideous development and the original bad car park has been replaced by an even worse car park.

Premier Peter Malinauskas addresses the crowd outside parliament last Sunday. Picture: RoyVphotography

The absurd amalgamation of the universities of Adelaide and South Australia includes attracting an extra 6000 foreign students per year and, thanks to this current compromise, more students can he housed next to the Cranker, which will give those students a place.

Hopefully, saving the Cranker increases the value of heritage and the stellar example of the Cranker supporters will inspire all of us to fight like hell in the hope that governments continue to listen.

The Premier has also promised legislation to preserve other historic hotels and to preserve them against the complaints of whingeing neighbours who choose to live near them and then want to close them down.

Maybe the Premier could end the ridiculous Adelaide Airport curfew which exists to please people who chose to live near the airport.

Then-premier Don Dunstan saved the historic Edmund Wright House.

Now its obscured by hideous, ubiquitous London plane trees and it’s been empty for years. It’s dead heritage.

The Crown and Anchor Hotel must close for two years while the new development takes place. Perhaps it could move into Edmund Wright House? Edmund Right House.

Daily Telegraph. 19, August, 2024. Logies winner, Larry Emdur, who got his tattoo live on air during The Morning Show, in Eveleigh, today. Picture: Justin Lloyd.

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