crawf wrote: ↑Wed Apr 10, 2024 12:19 am
It's also interesting to hear the media say 'one of the tallest' and not the 'tallest'.
Possibly this originates in the government press release. I can see why they would want to avoid bandying about the fact that this will be the tallest, given how controversial the tower already is.
Re the comment "Ghost Tower".. If there is no demand for office space, then why would Walker Corp be planning to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a development like this. Adelaide does have the highest office vacancy rate in the country, though so much of it are old and run down office buildings which no one wants to work in and is unable to meet today’s standards. So many should be converted into apartments, short term accommodation or just simply knocked down. The Da Costa building would be a great candidate for conversion into some snazzy apartments.
Basically, the answer to your rhetorical question is that the government will likely provide Walker with the pre-commitments required to get this tower off the ground. I'm sure it is all part of the mysterious dealings that have been going on behind the scenes. We already knew back last year that the government was in discussions with Walker regarding the potential relocation of staff from the State Administration Centre to fill a second Festival Plaza tower.
That's likely the quid pro quo here. The State Government gets the revenue for giving Walker development rights on public land. In return, Walker gets the sure tenant they need to get finance to build their tower. A fully private proposal on private land could never compete with such a sweet deal.
Yes, it is true that there is a lot of low quality stock which should be converted to other uses, but for whatever reason, that isn't happening. The building owners prefer to let these older buildings sit vacant rather than redevelop them or offer them for rent at the price point which would attract tenants. It would appear that something doesn't stack up economically.
dbl96 wrote: ↑Wed Apr 10, 2024 12:01 am
Not really. Malinauskus has been good for PR, but the positive trends were well in place right back to the Weatherill era with increased investment and better image. SA then did really well through COVID under Marshall, by keeping the virus out and allowing things to function much as normal, unlike the total disfunction we saw in places like NSW and Victoria.
I agree about the Weatherill era, he was a great Premier. Rebuilding Adelaide Oval in particular has been the most transformational project for this city in decades.
Though not sure what you consider things to function as normal under Marshall. South Australia had some of the most ridiculous and confusing restrictions in the country, hell we were one of the last jurisdictions to allow dancing if not the last. And let's not forget about the embarrassing fiasco over the pizza box strain.
South Australia was the model state for how to deal with COVID. We acted decisively to eliminate the virus each time it arrived, which allowed life to quickly return to mostly normal. Yes, of course there were some restrictions, but for the vast majority of the pandemic period, they were not on a level which completely impeded everyday life, like the months-long lockdowns in the eastern states where COVID became established did. That's why we had the influx of "COVID refugees", who came here to work from home and turned around the interstate migration figures. Its also why various economic performance indicators consistently outperformed those for the eastern states through COVID and beyond. Compare these gross state product charts from the ABS:
https://www.abs.gov.au/articles/cumulat ... erritories . NSW and Victoria took a massive knocking during COVID, from which they are still struggling to recover. South Australia's downturn was short and minor, and economic growth then very quickly went on to accelerate to levels well above the pre-pandemic predictions. This was already the case in 2021 and 2022 when some COVID restrictions were still very much a reality.
I'm not attributing this all to Marshall, by the way. In South Australia, all sides of politics took a sensible approach and allowed COVID policy to be guided by the health experts, unlike interstate where it was politicised.
The pizza restaurant incident might have made some people look silly, but at the time, the response was the correct one. Only by acting quickly and decisively could the virus be eliminated. In the absence of a clear explanation about the chain of transmission, the best way of managing risk was a short and sharp lockdown to stop it in its tracks. People now laugh about it, because they later discovered there was no reason to be so concerned, but absent that information at the time the decision was made, the decision was correct. If the situation had turned out as the experts first though, and a new highly infection strain was circulating, then a failure to act immediately to shut down that transmission would have resulted in the virus quickly becoming established in the community, as happened in NSW and Victoria. Once that happens it is almost impossible to get rid of it. It was much better to have a couple of days of lockdown out of an abundance of caution than to risk having to implement the months-long lockdowns Sydney and Melbourne went through.