Peter Goers: Vultures of culture circling Marion Cultural centre and Noarlunga’s Hopgood Theatre
IT’S time for the people to rise up when a council wants to knock down a popular cultural centre to build a hotel, says Peter Goers.
- Hotel would rob arts groups of performance space
- Marion Council considers selling cultural centre
- Architects call for Marion centre to be heritage-listed
- Oaklands Park hotel to create ‘world class’ suburban hub
WE’RE ever on the eve of destruction. Bugger. Italo Calvino is sage. In his novel Invisible Cities a man asks why the construction of a building is taking so long. The builders reply “So that its destruction cannot begin”.
Funny. Sad. True. Marion.
Marion Cultural Centre is one of the best community cultural centres in SA and a beautiful, novel building.
Built in 2001, it received major architecture and design awards. It comprises an excellent library, theatre, art gallery, cafe, shop and meeting rooms. It is much loved and highly used.
The new Oaklands Crossing and railway station references Marion Cultural Centre in its design and takes pedestrians expressly to it. In March, Marion Council devoted funds for a Southern Fringe next year at Marion Cultural Centre – a Fringe hub.
So far. So good. Except a majority of councillors and the controversial mayor of Marion are pushing to have a 15-storey hotel on the site of the beloved Marion Cultural Centre and hoping a multinational hotel chain will replicate the cultural centre in it’s building or elsewhere.
And pigs fly over Marion.
The refrain is always jobs, growth and investment. This really means ugly development. What about the jobs, growth and investment of the current cultural centre? What about social capital? What about culture?
A 17-year-old building may be sacrificed for what? Rates?
If the good people of Marion do not rise up and oppose this they do not deserve their cultural centre and they deserve the local leadership they currently have.
Similarly the superb Hopgood Theatre at Noarlunga, well run by Country Arts SA, is in danger.
Current funding will keep it open only for another five months. Probably only Onkaparinga Council and state government can save it. That council already has a Port Noarlunga arts centre but two theatres in that huge bailiwick is not unrealistic.
The arts are a major industry in SA. They are also essential. They define us in ways that a multi-storey hotel or carpark can’t.
We rarely keep endangered theatres although the renovation of Her Majesty’s Theatre and the preservation of Shedley at Elizabeth are miraculous and fine examples of government investment in the arts and community will.
Last weekend the grand old Thebarton Theatre celebrated its 90th anniversary and it is one of the few SA theatres commercially run even though it is owned by local government and seeks crucial funds from the State Government for renovation.
Culture is expensive and crucial. Governments are hard-pressed and stressed by the requirements of the arts but that’s what governments are for. Plus a few other things. We’re all going to hell so let’s be entertained, edified and enlightened as we go.
The University of Adelaide has either destroyed or made its theatres largely unusable. Too often local governments beautifully restore halls and then make them too expensive to use.
We need the Hopgood Theatre and it needs help. Marion needs a hotel but why does it need to sacrifice a beautiful, new cultural centre?
Why can’t they add the hotel on to Marion Shopping Centre. It could only improve that. I’ll chain myself to the Marion Cultural Centre in front of the bulldozers but will I be alone on the eve of destruction?
■ Peter Goers can be heard weeknights on ABC Radio Adelaide