Festival Plaza eyesore will only get worse: Michael McGuire

Labor and Liberal are both to blame for a decade of incompetence at the Adelaide Festival Plaza – and there is worse to come, writes Michael McGuire.

Has there been any other project in South Australia in recent decades that has been as comprehensively mismanaged as the redevelopment of the Adelaide Festival Plaza? And this has been a bipartisan effort. Both Labor and Liberal governments have delivered us this mess.

There was another announcement this week that all was well and that the Festival Plaza redevelopment will be opened by March. You don’t want to be overly pessimistic, but it’s not exactly the first time there has been a positive forecast since former Labor premier Jay Weatherill and Sydney billionaire property developer Lang Walker joined forces all the way back in 2012.

Since there has been multiple announcements of plans and new plans and latest plans.

So, that’s a decade of incompetence and indecision and a weeping sore of a building site defacing the centre of the city. Break out the balloons and cake. That’s an anniversary worth celebrating.

This week’s announcement held another little poison pill for South Australians.

In among the hoopla of the forecast March opening for the plaza, Treasurer Rob Lucas slipped in that the office tower on the Festival Plaza site would now be 29 storeys high.

Apparently, that was the sweetener for Walker, because the cost of the $253m festival plaza has blown out. Of course, Lucas welcomed it with familiar words.

“This is a once-in-a-generation development that will breathe new life into one of the most important parts of our city,” he said.

Festival Plaza - artist’s impression - Images: ARM Architecture

The words are familiar because they are so eerily similar to the platitudes mouthed by Weatherill all the way back in 2016, when the office block was going to be just the 23 storeys high.

“There couldn’t be a more important part of Adelaide and there couldn’t be a more important part of our vibrant city strategy than to invest in the Riverbank Precinct,’’ Weatherill parped back then.

It’s hard to think of a worse use for the plaza, which is bounded by Parliament House, the festival centre, the casino and King William Rd, than a 29-storey high rise that, based on released designs so far, will be another boring high rise that will dwarf all that surrounds it. It’s the wrong building, in the wrong place. And it could have a twin one day.

Walker is still agitating for another high rise on the site. Lucas has ruled a second tower out, but there have been so many promises made and broken on this project that should hardly be regarded as a fixed position, no matter who wins the state election in March.

Adelaide seems to have put itself in a position where we swing from one extreme to the other on development. We either have people spruiking massive inappropriate developments or we have those who believe every blade of grass in the parklands was personally planted by William Light and is sacred.

Some of the bigger riverfront developments are a blight. The new Adelaide Casino hotel is fantastically ugly, apparently styling itself on the poo emoji, which undermines confidence that the state government’s bid to rezone parts of the riverbank to allow more 20-storey buildings is a good idea.

Then we have the state government’s $662m indoor arena on alienated parkland that has the Adelaide City Council flipping and flopping. It’s certainly a remarkable price tag for a 15,000-seat stadium, especially one that doesn’t include a soccer pitch.

There must be a middle ground, a way to bring life to the Riverbank, which should be Adelaide’s premier meeting space. There must be a place for bars and restaurants, a place to gather as a community and enjoy the city. There must be a way to avoid either ugly overdevelopment or complete stasis.

A recent proposal to build small-scale restaurants and bars on Pinky Flat caused controversy, but seems a reasonable idea.

The argument on how best to use the city’s parklands has been around as long as Adelaide. There is no doubt they are a wonderful asset, but unless South Australians actually use them, we will not enjoy their true potential.