Michael McGuire: We must fix Adelaide Festival Centre mess
A major redevelopment of the Festival Plaza promised much but has delivered little and is now just a billion-dollar hole in the ground writes Michael McGuire. What do you think?
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Last Sunday, I wandered down to the Festival Theatre. It was to see Jason Alexander, George from Seinfeld, touring his one man show. It was fun.
But, it’s been a little while since I’ve been down that part of town. It’s a mess. A planning disaster that somehow just sits there day after day unresolved.
A testimony to some genuinely shocking government decision-making going back to 2012.
And the biggest problem seems to be there is no end in sight.
The plaza at the Adelaide Festival Centre should be one of the premier public spaces in South Australia.
Bordered by the theatres, Parliament House and down to Elder Park and the Torrens, it doesn’t take a great deal of imagination to see it as a hub of activity, a place to gather as a community.
But at the moment, it’s a hole in the ground, a carpark under construction, surrounded by wooden boards. What happened to the supposed $1 billion redevelopment of the area? Has it turned into a mirage in the city?
Turning off King William St to get to the theatre is like following Alice down the rabbit hole. You’re not entirely sure where you are going or where you will bob up.
And, while I’m mostly worried about the effect of all this on us as South Australians, you wonder about what impression it leaves on tourists who come to the state to experience our festival atmosphere.
How did it come to this?
This, after all, is a process that started all the way back in 2012. The idea was not a bad one. Hajek Plaza was a tired place where no one lingered. A spruce up was required. The best explanation of what happened next is contained in a report by Auditor-General Ian McGlen, which came out in November 2017.
The report is written in typical dry, grey auditor-general language.
But even that cannot disguise that McGlen believed the process undertaken with the Sydney property billionaire Lang Walker to redevelop the area was vastly inadequate.
The report is littered with familiar names from the Labor era – Jay Weatherill, Tom Koutsantonis and John Rau.
McGlen’s report includes phrases such as “fundamental shortcomings’’ and “lack of transparency’’. He criticises a lack of documentation and financial analysis.
A timeline in the document reveals all the missteps and reversals of policy. Expressions of interest in the project were called for in 2012.
Later that year Walker Corporation was invited to develop a proposal for a carpark and riverbank development.
By November the following year, the government had rejected the proposal and committed to only engage in talks about the carpark.
That was a decision they should have abided by.
Instead, year followed year, there was much back and forth and by 2016 a new development agreement was signed.
It was to include a 23-storey office tower and entertainment precinct. By September 2018, Walker was predicting “some major announcements before Christmas’’. Never happened.
Since then there has been little movement. It’s been reported Walker has been angling for a second tower and hotel. That’s understandable, no one has ever accused Walker of being a charity. The government apparently wants more open space and we have a stand-off that no one seems capable of resolving.
There is still no agreement on what any final design should look like. No agreement, therefore, on when any work would start. Or even end. The carpark, at least, is due for completion later this year. Labor set this wreck in motion but you also have to wonder what the Liberal Government has been doing for two years. Even former Liberal major projects tsar Roger Cook, appointed to fix the mess, quit last year in frustration.
The Adelaide Riverbank Authority was abolished by the Marshall Government in 2018, but its website still sits there. It reads “Adelaide Festival Plaza is set to become a world-class destination.’’
The phrase “set to” is doing a lot of work in that sentence.
