Talking Point: Tick off on terrific twin towers

REX Gardner urges council to give the green light to a plan to build Hobart’s tallest building.

Tick off on terrific twin towers

IT looks innocuous enough sitting quietly on the City of Hobart council agenda for today’s meeting.

Planning application number PLN-15-01162-01 lines up with all the other regular items, but this one has big ramifications for Hobart’s future.

The proposal the council will grapple with is for the city’s tallest building by a long shot — the new 73m high Palace Hotel on the former Westpac bank site in the Elizabeth St bus mall, opposite the post office.

The decision on the two slender conjoined towers will be a watershed moment for council and the people of Hobart: what sort of city do we envisage for the future?

Do we amble along as we are, with a city skyline that is not exactly a credit to our planning past or do we embrace the vision of architects, developers and the expectations of the tourism sector?

Are we open for business? Do we want major investment from interstate and overseas?

If we are seriously in the tourism business, we all have to lift our game.

The Palace Hotel at 73m will be the same height as Wrest Point, and well above the city’s tallest buildings, the Commonwealth Centre on Collins St at 57m, and the AMP building across Elizabeth St at 54m.

The height limit in the central business zone is about 45m.

The Palace is the sixth major hotel on Hobart’s drawing boards, and in the eyes of our tourism sector its 196 five-star rooms, most with knockout views, will help replenish the shortage of accommodation in Hobart and attract visitors from China and South-East Asia.

High on its list of attractions will be a pool across the two towers, a rooftop cocktail bar, and classy restaurant.

But the Palace towers will be a “spike in the heart of Hobart’s heritage”, Hobart Alderman Anna Reynolds said last week, heralding a growing debate about maintaining the city’s heritage character with all this development.

Put in context with other Australian cities, including regional cities, the Palace Hotel is a pipsqueak in terms of height.

As was intimated recently before a council planning committee meeting, we should take a deep breath and keep a cool head — this is not a big building in real terms.

A minnow, in fact, less than a quarter the size of Australia’s tallest building.

We’d be laughed out of town in Melbourne, home to the nation’s most skyscrapers. It has at least 46 buildings more than twice the height of the Palace Hotel.

Sydney has 33 buildings more than twice the height, and even Darwin has the 99m residential apartment tower Evolution on Gardiner (2008) and the ACT the 93m Lovett Tower (1973).

Westpac House (1988) is Adelaide’s tallest at 132m, Sydney has Chifley Tower (1992) at 244m and Central Park (1992) in Perth dominates the skyline at 249m.

Melbourne’s Eureka Tower (2006) is 297m and Brisbane’s Q1 tower (2005) tops them all at 323m.

If we are seriously in the tourism business, we all have to lift our game.

When you look how Hobart’s skyline has changed over the years, development has not necessarily been attractive or sensitive so you could argue we have not got much of a skyline to protect.

Sticking out like sore thumbs are the Empress Towers at Battery Point and the Marine Board building on the docks. And plenty of our other large city buildings are boring and unattractive.

Even the Wrest Point tower is totally unsympathetic to its Sandy Bay surrounds.

So the sins of our past haphazard development may be redeemed by today’s architects if they are given a fair chance.

On the drawings and streetscapes submitted with proposed Palace Hotel development, it appears to merge sympathetically with surrounding buildings, despite being considerably higher.

More distant montages from vantage points around the city, like the Cenotaph and the Eastern Shore, show the Palace’s impact is nothing compared to those past sins.

Managing director at Jaws Architects and the Palace project director Neal Macintosh said the site — where the old Palace Theatre from the silent movie era once stood — was “certainly one of the best spots in Hobart for a building of this height”.

The Macquarie St ridge was where tall buildings should exist, providing a suitable backdrop to Sullivan’s Cove, he said. Mr Macintosh said the council’s decision today “will be an important moment, when we have to decide what sort of a city we are to be”.

We have to decide whether the Palace sits comfortably in Hobart and whether our city’s culture should portray each era of architectural endeavour and development.

Jaws Architects’ proposal explains that “two slender conjoined towers are placed on the podium building, one slightly lower than the other to help break down the scale and massing of the building.

“This strategy allows the building to respond to the scale of the street and the scale of the city concurrently.”

While the council may approve the Palace Hotel application, it could still be overturned by the planning appeals tribunal if challenged by outside parties.

An application approved by council for a 36.6m hotel in Macquarie St on the former Myer homewares store was recently overturned by the tribunal. The planning scheme for the area only allowed 12m height. Today is judgment day for the council.

Surely we must come of age with exciting, progressive and sensitive development.

Rex Gardner is a former chief executive of the Mercury. He has worked as a journalist and in management for News Corp both here and overseas.