Adelaidenow's failure of a Adelaide bashing article

[iTouch]

Progress is in the eye of the beholder. The Adelaide square mile offers endless opportunities for progress, but developers and I include State Government here only see obstacles.

The stinginess and lack of vision that so often gets in the way of development in Adelaide comes from the very people we could look to for building the city.
Developers, Business SA and the Property Council could be at the forefront of creative ideas for the city square mile but instead you get a bunch of tyre kickers. They look at Adelaide, complain that it's all too hard, then sail into their favourite Red under every bed: the heritage lobby.
To see this attitude being echoed by the latest batch of young Property Council members this week is tremendously disappointing. Surely they are not so wet behind the ears to have missed all the arguments so eloquently made about the shape and style of the city of Adelaide over the years.
Adelaide inside the square mile is full of cheap under-developed land.
To hear the property developers the city is out of bounds to them because it's all heritage listed.
To hear the State Government, new developments like the Royal Adelaide Hospital don't fit inside the square.
To hear the Adelaide City Council, their hands are tied by State Government.
To hear the Business Council, we, the public, are standing in the way of progress - read dollars.
This is all nonsense promulgated by people who can't do the hard yards. They have conned Adelaide so often they think it is the only way to do business. You have to look long and hard through the dross to find those developers who have a sense of integrity and vision for Adelaide.
A city that still has new and used car yards inside its CBD is most definitely not a city short of land for development.
A city CBD with large tracts of vacant and warehouse land, poor quality and decaying office and commercial blocks, large petrol stations and acres of undistinguished houses and townhouses, is definitely not short of opportunities for progress and development.
What this city is suffering from is a bunch of second-rate developers.
The State Government's monumental lack of imagination puts it right at the forefront of this lot. Someone should tell them that their obsession with building roads, hospitals and facilities in public space rather than on city land is giving developers a bad name.
*Is commercial land cheap? Just before the Global Financial Crisis hit, in mid 2007, BIS Schrapnel Australian real commercial land prices were 23 per cent below their 1980s peak.
*Since then, BIS Schrapnel says there has been a ``cyclical downturn'' in commercial real estate prices.

I feel like picking apart this article.
A. Tim Lloyd using statistics in mid 2007. Bad idea. We HAVE had a recession so it may change all that dramatically.
B. Take a look at this picture

Caption: Vacant lot land in Whitmore Square, Adelaide. Picture: Naomi Jellicoe
1. The sign still says SANTOS proving that the picture is outdated by at least 4 or 5 years
2. There is no City Central confirming that the picture is outdated at least 5 years
Sure the place is still vacant, but it couldn't have hurt to take a more UPDATED picture. Especially when a journalist for the Advertiser is located a couple of blocks away on Waymouth St.

All the rest is Bias and Adelaide bashing. Typical Adelaidenow.

[crawf]

The article does make some good points though.

There is stack loads of underdeveloped sites that could be developed into mid/high rises, yet we seem to be more focusing on the burbs than the heart of Adelaide

Hopefully next year we will see the end of the 1930s CBD planning system.

[iTouch]

Sorry Crawf I edited it.

[stumpjumper]

Read the interview with Harbison in the Advertiser magazine, Sat 30th October. Tim Lloyd wasn't bashing Adelaide - he was bashing the government.
The biggest obstacle to development of the square mile is the state government, which continually rezones cheaper land outside the city at the requerst of the development industry which thereby makes a better profit.

The influence of the heritage lobby and the notorious North Adelaide NIMBYs is exaggerated. The heritage lobby has nothing to say about development of the many vacant or underused non-heritage sites in Adelaide, which is by far the bulk of them.

The North Adelaide NIMBYs really don't care about what happens in South Adelaide.

As for the ACC being the fly in the ointment, read Harbison's article as I said. Remember that ACC, and the North Adelaide residents, approved five separate developments on the Makris O'Connell Street site including a development proposed by Makris. It's still not built, but not because of opposition from the council or residents.

The reason the development industry from Nathan Paine down is happy to paint ACC and its supposedly backwards-looking residents is that they will not admit the real reason for many vacant sites in the city - that there is cheaper land available in the nearby suburbs, provided you can get the Minister to rezone the land and approve your development. The developers just don't want to admit that they are motivated solely by profit. They prefer to look like community benefactors.

This is not the case in every inner urban development, but it certainly is in the case of Park Central at Kent Town and TEN7 at Gilberton, and many others where the developers will reap a super profit from rezoning that is simply not available in the city.

Put yourself in charge of development in the Adelaide metro area: the city is desperate for more citizens, it would benefit hugely from them. Would you ignore that in favour of doing the development industry's bidding by rezoning near city areas, just to maximise their profit?

Shouldn't you act instead in the interest of the community and the city?

Sorry to labour the point, but it is a very important one.

[Will]

SJ, the population of Adelaide is growing. In fact it is expected to increase by approximately 600 000 residents by 2040.

I agree with what you are saying about the need for more residents in the CBD, however, we cannot house of all of them in the CBD.

You have also said that you would like Adelaide to have Sydney-type vitality. The reason for the buzz in Sydney is that their CBD is surrounded by suburbs containing high-rise residential buildings. Hence, I cannot understand your opposition to high-rise developments in our inner city suburbs. For example, the residents in the new Kent Town and former channel 7 developments can easily walk to the city. Unlike those living in those new housing developments at Freeling.

Hence, with our population likely to increase by 600 000 in 30 years time, we have a choice. We either build upwards or outwards.