Peter Goers: Councils love high rise, but will it really make Adelaide more liveable?

There are plenty of things that could be improved about our city, Peter Goers writes, but the council is more intent on getting Adelaide stuffed with people in new high rise buildings.

Quick! If you hurry you can be down in the depths on the 37th floor of the new tower of apartments looming over the Adelaide Central Market. Most of the apartments have sold off the plan but the penthouse is still available at $10m. On the 37th floor you’d be well above the noise of delivery and garbage trucks. That’s if the market survives. It may be razed for more high rise buildings and people attracted to living above the Central Market may have to be on the run to an On The Run for their fruit and veg.

The Adelaide City Council is controlled by the conservative, often disruptive and bloody-minded Team Adelaide faction. But the council has a plan. The plan doesn’t seem to include replacing or restoring the potentially dangerous City Bridge and Torrens Weir but to have many more high-rise developments to house a huge increase in the residential population of the City of Adelaide to 50,000 souls by 2041.

The 2016 census has 15,115 people resident in the city in 8045 dwellings. They’re about to get a lot of neighbours. Blind Freddy can see a proliferation of ticky tacky, high-rise buildings enveloping our not so fair city. But you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

The city council wants to stack people into the city. That’s the plan. Property developers, encouraged by a rampaging council, are buying air and making a motza.

Artist’s impression of the Central Market Arcade Redevelopment, which will see an enhanced and expanded Central Market will also include residential, hotel, office accommodation and retail owned by ICD Property – named Market Square.

The Central Market Arcade Redevelopment interior.

I love living in an apartment at Glenelg – a box in the sky but it’s not for everyone, thank goodness. From our quarter-acre blocks, we used to feel sorry for people living in high-rise and low-rise flats and now many of us want to. Things change.

The city council’s so called “high level plan” is really a high-rise plan. The plan asserts than more high-rise buildings will make Adelaide the most liveable city in the world. Well, that’s the plan.

Lots of folk lived in the city before the 1950s and then they moved to the suburbs leaving a few toffs, derros, bohemians and prostitutes as city dwellers. In the 1970s I swear there were tumbleweeds rolling along Grote and Gouger streets on a Sunday arvo and now it’s the most vibrant area in the city. Good.

All the workers’ cottages have been renovated but since they rarely had driveways the residents claim permit parks so it can be agony to park near Hutt St and elsewhere.

Councils love high-rise apartments. They replace buildings which may garner $10,000 a year in rates with an apartment building which raises $500,000 in rates with no council rubbish removal. Owners of high rise apartments pay a fortune for private rubbish removal. A building, for example, with 130 apartments pays $30,000 a year to have rubbish removed.

We need much better public transport, bike lanes, shops and much more green space in the city for the existing residents let alone for an extra 35,000 residents.

The parklands are endlessly compromised and the squares are traffic islands. We need many more small parks.

International students are generally accommodated in dog boxes often without either balconies or windows that can open. Adelaide has the smallest green canopy of any Australian capital city.

Residents need more amenities and they’re already losing them. Coles at the Central Market is about to close for up to five years while the market precinct is completely redeveloped.

Team Adelaide’s Lord Mayor Sandy Verschoor is highly excited by all the high-rise development including that which replaces the popular beach volleyball site on Pirie St, the towers on the Le Cornu site at North Adelaide and the Central Market towers. The Le Cornu site could’ve been a lovely park. The bluestone of North Adelaide is under threat of further encroaching high-rise development and heritage listing means almost nothing anymore.

It seems that the planned 50,000 residents of the city will only be green with envy. But the plan is very much up in the air.

Peter Goers can be heard weeknights and Sundays on ABC Radio Adelaide