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How many revamped precincts does one city need?

Lainie Anderson

by Lainie Anderson

19 Jun 05:50am

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Filed under: Adelaide, Government, Infrastructure, South Australia, Tourism, Town Planning, Urban Renewal, Victoria Square

32 comments

We South Australians have some harebrained ideas sometimes. This week, Adelaide City Council decided to push ahead with multi-million dollar plans to revitalise the dreary and deserted Victoria Square into a major CBD hub.

Upside down. Round and round.

That’s despite the fact that the State Government is already pushing ahead with its own multi-BILLION dollar plans to revitalise the nearby Riverbank precinct as the new city’s heart and soul.

After lengthy debate on Tuesday night, Adelaide City Council voted to invest $11.5 million on Victoria Square – despite the fact that there’s no commitment from the state or federal government to cough up the $100 million needed to complete the project.

That means only $1.7 million is left in this year’s budget to begin revitalising the CBD’s ageing retail strip, Rundle Mall. To my mind, that’s daft for a couple of reasons.

Traditional shopping malls are under pressure right across Australia. Borders bookstores are gone and just this week Colorado announced the closure of 109 stores plus 31 Mathers, Williams, Diana Ferrari and Jag outlets.

Online shopping is where it’s at. I bought boots for 70 per cent off recommended retail from online sales website Buy Invite, and Lego at 60 per cent off. It’s bad for SA jobs I know, but how do you ignore 70 per cent off the boots you can’t find in Adelaide anyway?

Retail experts predict that online and mobile purchases will soon account for 10 per cent of total consumer spending in Australia, and the figure could eventually rise as high as 30 per cent.

Add to this the fierce competition from suburban precincts offering undercover browsing and free parking. Not to mention the designated tourism precincts that, unlike the Mall, can trade on public holidays.

Anne Moran, one of two councillors who failed in their bid on Tuesday to shift funds from Victoria Square to Rundle Mall, says the CBD accounted for 15 per cent of the state’s retail sales when she started on council in the 1990s. It’s now down to five per cent.

“If we reinvest the Victoria Square budget into Rundle Mall for the next three years, even without outside funding we’ll be able to finish the revitalisation plan in time for inner-city football by 2014,” Ms Moran says.

“We’ve only got one shot at showing these crowds that the Mall is alive and welcoming – imagine a lively Rundle Mall with little cafes and wine bars in some of the laneways like Charles Street. It would be great for the city.”

Let’s face it. Rundle Mall is like a tired old aunt – you remember her fondly but can find plenty of excuses not to visit. Car parking rates can be extortionate, constantly wafting cigarette smoke is gross, it often seems dirty and at night it feels scary.

With some solid council funding and a little ingenuity to make it more enticing and bring its laneways to life, the mall would quickly generate new income for the city: more shoppers, more high-end destination boutiques and more people flowing in after football games at Adelaide Oval in a few years’ time.

I know the council is under pressure to stop talking and start acting on Victoria Square. But surely the game changed when the State Government honed in on the Riverbank and announced billions to build the new RAH, extend the convention centre, tizzy up Torrens Lake and bring football back to Adelaide Oval.

And let’s face it. Without massive investment to create a big attraction that draws people in, Victoria Square will only ever be a thoroughfare.

Vic Square’s time will come. But not before there’s enough cash on the table to do it right (with an underpass and more than a few extra pavers) and the population base to sustain two new inner-city outdoor meccas.

For now, council should turn its attention to Rundle Mall – ensuring her status as Adelaide’s premier retail hub and making her pretty in time for the Riverbank party.

Are there any renewal projects in your home town or city which you think are desperately needed, or that are on the cards but seem like a total waste of time and money? The Punch encourages you to broaden this discussion and cite examples below.

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32 comments

Show oldest | newest first

    • Gregg says:

      08:15am | 19/06/11

      Nearly seems all levels of governments are always wanting to spend more of taxpayers/ratepayers money or borrowing some on their behalf because they reckon something needs to be done to cheer folk up.
      A lot of folk might be a bit cheerier if their taxes/rates were kept lower and then they would have more disposable income that could find its way to retail outlets, making for more jobs and attracting investment by the retailers.

      One of the things that China is doing to keep their economy bouyant is building an english village to be among their ghost cities of high rise apartments, all a very good investment many apparently believe, but one helluva crash is going to come raining down some day.

      Reply

    • Goldenfaber says:

      10:18am | 19/06/11

      I have been paying income tax since the mid 1970’s and my personal income tax is lower now than ANY other time and has been declining all this century…...invest in a calculator.

    • acotrel says:

      08:15am | 19/06/11

      Have a look at Swanston Street in Melbourne.  It’s supposed to be a shopping mall, yet most of the shops are seedy little business with little interest for shoppers?  Perhaps we are waiting for people to realise how beautiful it is?  Of course the street used to be a main north - south thoroughfare with direct access to Princes Bridge, and as a result of it’s closure Hoddle street now carries that traffic, and every evening it’s close to causing grid lock.  But - no matter!  We’ve got our mall, even though Elizabeth street was the obvious better choice.  And the dingbats in town planning are now suggesting that trams should run down Hoddle street, ‘because they carry more passengers than cars’.  Seems to me that entrance to civil engineering courses at uni must be restricted to retards?

      Reply

    • @CraigLambie says:

      09:20am | 20/06/11

      acotrel, you poor misguided person - you are obviously addicted to your car, you must not be one of the elitists that Simon Green is talking about today.  As only a retard would think Civil Engineers are retards.
      For starters, the Civil Engineers I know want to build a huge bridge over Punt/Hoddle Rd to help with the massive amounts of traffic….. actually looking at that comment - it is pretty retarded.
      Especially when you consider one lane of car traffic can carry about 2000 people per hour, and 1 heavy rail line can carry around 40000 people per hour - source http://www.ptua.org.au/myths/capcost.shtml - at around 1/5 of the cost - seems we should be building heavy rail everywhere if you ask me.
      Then you also consider that building more freeways only encourages more people to drive - http://www.ptua.org.au/myths/congestion.shtml
      Maybe you should rethink your little statement.
      I agree civil engineers are pretty retarded.  Unfortunately politicians have been listening to them for far to long, causing massive under investment in Public Transport and massive over spending in congestion causing roads, like the Eastern Freeway, the Eastern Ring Road, etc.
      As to Swanston St - it is a beautiful street that has seen massive increases in retail spending, as has the entire CBD as the city has become one of the most beautiful places to come, shop, walk, relax, enjoy a latte etc.

    • nossy says:

      08:55am | 19/06/11

      Adelaide Laine - ahh yes “Gods waiting Room” ! Honestly the best view of Adelaide is out of the rear window of a car speeding north !  hahahahah

      Reply

    • Daniel says:

      08:58am | 19/06/11

      I dont care how many revamps Adelaide has. Compared to Sydney with Sydney traffic. Adelaide is heaven.

      Reply

    • Fendo says:

      09:11am | 19/06/11

      Well, at least you’re doing something. Perth, on the other hand, come up with about 4 different ideas every year to redevelop certain areas, and nothing ever gets done. All talk and a lot of waste.

      Reply

    • Ben81 says:

      01:25pm | 19/06/11

      That’s pretty much exactly what happens with Victoria Square and a lot of other Adelaide things too.  That’s why everyone was so surprised when the Adelaide Oval thing actually got off the ground.

    • Robert Smissen of country SA says:

      11:35pm | 19/06/11

      Ben81 the oval fiasco isn’t done & dusted yet. I can’t understand why everyone wants to build on the open spaces. Con man Conlon wants to build on the sports field behind Adelaide high school, I’m not sure where he thinks our kids will play sport, but then I guess he doesn’t give a rodent’s rectum about kids

    • X Adelaidian says:

      09:37am | 19/06/11

      Adelaide is paradise compared with other big cities in Australia - I miss the smallness of the city and the ease of access.  Don’t let them sell it’s soul to be like any other city in Australia or the world.

      Reply

    • spart says:

      09:48am | 19/06/11

      Revitalizing the northern precint is the only way to go for Adelaide. The Rundle Mall and Street strip, and the North Terrace Museum and University area is about ally the city has to offer. Combining this with the redeveloped Adelaide Oval and some good connections between the two may actually produce quite vibrant area.

      Victoria Square is out of the way, and spending any more on it than maintenance figure is wasted money.

      In 16 years since leaving the town, I have been back three or four times, and it’s disappointing to see that the Mall just gets grubbier and grubbier, and let’s not even mention Hindley St.

      Reply

    • Nicole says:

      10:03am | 19/06/11

      Geraldton in WA just spent millions revamping the foreshore. It’s lovely and was definitely needed, but they didn’t take into account erosion and now most of the beach is gone and they predict that the Dome cafe that sits on the shore will be washed away in something like 10 years. I suspect that the people who plan only ever look at the short term gain and never the bigger picture, as is the case in Adelaide.

      Reply

    • sir ronald bradnam says:

      10:07am | 19/06/11

      Its always easy for elected ordinary bureaucrats to spend other peoples money in the pursuit of the belief that somehow this will get them a few votes come next election. Local, State and federal bureaucrats, doesnt matter, they are all the same.

      Reply

    • H says:

      10:13am | 19/06/11

      Would be nice if the State Government got back to running the State and left the running of Adelaide CBD to the Adelaide City Council..

      Reply

    • Tony of Poorakistan says:

      03:40pm | 19/06/11

      Absolutely.

      And get rid of that development review mob that keep overturning the Council’s decisions

    • Taylor says:

      10:39am | 19/06/11

      Adelaide City Council voted to invest $11.5M into Victoria Square - what does that give us? Will they be construction cost blow-outs? And how is the Council planning to clawback the construction cost,e.g., will it get income for leasing out the square for major events…that is if it does charge for it in the first place? Adelaide has a lot of capital investments happening/planned, doing less is more.

      Reply

    • Goldenfaber says:

      10:43am | 19/06/11

      The trouble with this latest band wagon of nonsense is that it is based on the sort of knowledge and insight of people who said that the tram to West Terrace was a tram to nowhere. They had not kept up with the development of for example the University at the west end of the city. I hop on the tram at the railway station and invariably nearly all seats are already taken!
      Now look around Victoria Square. Adelaide as a commercial centre WAS always Rundle Mall and Grenfell Street focused with some Government offices around Victoria Square. Development has all moved south. Hence the huge development at 400 King William Street. The new police headquarters in Angas Street., the WaterSA building in Victoria Square, the mammoth development on Waymouth Street and the development being built behind the Adelaide post office now is to be Adelaide’s biggest office development. The proposed Victoria Square development is shovel ready. The proposed developments along North Terrace and Adelaide oval are a long way off completion unlike for example the vibrant life of the Adelaide market and Gouger Street that abut Victoria Square.

      Reply

    • Harquebus says:

      11:35am | 19/06/11

      To really plan ahead, we should be building stables and drinking stations for bullocks and horses.

      Reply

    • Ben81 says:

      01:22pm | 19/06/11

      Come on Lainie don’t tell me you haven’t accepted the fact that this latest hint at something happening is meaningless and nothing is going to happen with Victoria Square?

      All the money will be thrown at the North Terrace area now anyway.  Maybe that’s a good thing and we can get some actual use out of the Festival Centre area.

      Reply

    • Goldenfaber says:

      02:57pm | 19/06/11

      Unfortunately you are probably right. If you want some idea of what is to be built next to Victoria Square (some is there and other parts are being built) which will really turn this area around check out Utube City Central Scharp. Anybody who lives/works in the square mile or is interested in Adelaide’s development should see this. Developers know that with so many workers going to be moved to that area there must be restaurants, shops, bars etc.

    • Anjuli says:

      02:09pm | 19/06/11

      Seems to the one thing that Perth and Adelaide are missing out on is good amounts of water .I would have thought the pipe line from the North or connecting to the aquifers for Perth would be a priority as for Adelaide I am told they need good water too.

      Reply

    • Pamela says:

      02:21pm | 19/06/11

      Another excellent Lainie Anderson column and I mostly agree, especially about tarting up Rundle Street and its intriguing laneways first.    However, I am concerned about the comment in relation to online shopping.  Online shopping is affecting retailers small and large.  Not all retailers have the capacity to offer online shopping.  The playing field needs to be levelled before we find there are no local businesses on the field and thousands of jobs have gone.  A bit like local producers and local manufacturers.

      Reply

    • Rossco says:

      03:37pm | 19/06/11

      Why bother with Victoria Square, it’s one big traffic island or roundabout with nothing in the middle, and the new redevelopment wont offer anything new, just a fancier garden and some nice paving. Spend it on Rundle Mall.

      Reply

    • Robert S McCormick says:

      07:12pm | 19/06/11

      Let’s face the facts!
      Adelaide, that area surrounded by North, South, East & West Terraces (Other than for people with no sense of direction just how boring can those names get?) is the deadest, most boring excuse for a city in Australia &  most of the rest of the developed world !
      What does this place actually have?
      1) The Central Market - at least it is Alive - if not a patch on Melbourne’s Victoria Market.
      2) The Rundle Mall. One former Lord Mayor described this disaster as “The Best Shopping Mall in the World. Obviously he had never stepped outside SA for without doubt it is the most boring, dirty, airless couple of hundred metres in the world.
      Nor does it get any help from the rudest, most unfriendly, unhelpful shop assistants you could ever dread to come across.
      3) Rundle Street. Now this area is at least alive & shows what Adelaide should/could be like. Great shops - even if most seem to cater solely for the obese & those wishing to become so! The food is great though the “Rudeness Disease” is fast spreading there from the Rundle Mall
      4) Hindley Street. Despite it’s percieved sleaziness over the years it used to be a fun place to visit. Not any more. Dirty, down-at-heel, über-sleazy & a street to be avoided at all costs during the day because it is so depressing. At least at night the bright lights, or what there are of them, cover up some of the despair.
      5) North Terrace. The “Cutlural Centre of SA”. Great during the day for there are the Art Gallery & Library to visit.. At night it virtually shuts down. End of Story.
      That is the sum total of Adelaide. All the other streets are empty canyons of office buildings, many of them occupied by Public Servants, which are moribund during the day & completely taken over by Rigor Mortis at night.
      Adelaide should simply stop trying to be something it is not, nor ever will be. It is a very small, provincial town, run by a small, moribund State Government & Adelaide City Council. SA should simply forget Adelaide as a tourist destination & promote it as a staging post for all those beautiful areas well outside it’s boundaries.
      International Tourists, contrary to what retailers would have you believe, do not “Go Shopping” in Adelaide. Why would they when they can buy exactly the same goods as they can buy back home none of which are actually “Made in Adelaide”, “Made in SA” or even “Made in Australia”.
      At best they may buy an Ice Cream or two - which are identical to the Ice Creams they buy at home made by the same Multinational Company based in the Uk , US or Switzerland!
      The pretentious controllers of Adelaide think that a few statues of long-dead kings etc. an ugly, chatty fountain gives Adeliade some sort of claim to being “The Cultural Capital of Australia”. They don’t. Victoria Square is ugly & boring and that hideous, plastic, so-called “Christmas Tree” the Council puts up year after boring year does nothing for the town’s image other than to tell any visitors that it is a tatty little town lacking in everything - including Taste.
      1)

      Reply

    • Jason Todd says:

      08:22am | 20/06/11

      Yeah! Get stuck in! The street names are unoriginal! No good cities have boring street names! Next thing you know they will just be numbering them. How stupid would it be to have a city with major roads like “Fifth Avenue” and “West 81st street” . Laughable. And snooty shop assistants! Man, they ALL live in Adelaide! Let’s bulldoze the place.

      Sir, if your total experience of Adelaide is really what you suggest, then I would suggest that you have missed out on a great deal of what makes Adelaide what it is.

    • Goldenfaber says:

      06:51pm | 20/06/11

      Adelaide is not that bad. I have travelled a bit and can tell you that Australian cities are worth a look. Remember that part of travel is to see something different so when you go to Rome you see two thousand year old things BUT the centre of the city has mad drivers, abandoned stripped scooters every where, the trains are covered in graffiti inside and outside etc. And yet I enjoyed Rome. I have overheard interstate and overseas tourists say that they love Adelaide because for example they don’t have old statues in Tokyo – even the cars some Asians see here excite them. Yes Hindley street is sleazy but EVERY city in the world has a “Hindley Street”. And yes most backpackers,  parents who come here to see there children’s graduation at uni etc . will go and look at Victoria Square as it is in the centre of the city and be disappointed….  By the way at least one of our major inner city streets is not named Vulture Street unlike in Brisbane.:D

    • fatalberton says:

      10:45am | 20/06/11

      I’m not sure who created the thesis suggesting that laneway cafes equate to improved quality of life, but if progress is what has happened to Melbourne over the past two decades, then they can have it.  Sure, nice architecture and design, but it now rivals Sydney for transport problems and they even managed to f*ck up their tram system with some european ticketing system that the europeans wouldn’t buy.

      If traditional shops can’t compete with the online world then I’m not sure that’s a bad thing - perhaps we will get some public space back and maybe those earning minimum wages for corporate monoliths can do something more community-focussed.

      So spare me privatised riverbank revitalisation and give me investment in education, public transport and funding for non-government and non-corporate community groups. And if the laneway cafes still spring up then I will happily eat humble portuguese custard tart…

      Reply

    • Katherine says:

      11:16am | 20/06/11

      Wouldn’t it be great if they could spend some of that $11.5 million on keeping the Keith hospital open.

      Reply

    • Goldenfaber says:

      07:52pm | 20/06/11

      Does your council spend rate payers money on city hospitals? I can look this up on the internet….

    • Robert Smissen of country SA says:

      11:53am | 20/06/11

      Funny how Ranndy Mike & his henchmen think that SA Stops at the Toll-Gate, maybe just 10% could be siphoned off to help rural hospitals

      Reply

    • stephen says:

      09:05pm | 20/06/11

      Adelaide’s OK.
      Just ‘pre-sync’ the people.
      (They’re a bit ‘OJ’.)

      Reply

    • Glen T says:

      06:33pm | 26/06/11

      Complete nonsense. Rundle Mall is dreadful because the Borders, Colorados, and the like chased out the interesting small shops that were there before, turning Rundle Mall into yet another shopping centre.  Encouraging back those unqiue shops is they way to go, rather than stepping into the shopping centre glitz arm’s race, funded by rates payers. Borders and Colorado are international collapses, even if we’d spent a billion dollars on the Mall they would still be leaving the Mall.

      Victoria Square offers and opportunity for Adelaide businesses to claim back an area of the city. They’ve been driven from Rundle Mall thanks to council’s continual upgrades making the rates, and thus rents, unsustainable for budding businesses. A well designed Victoria Square will feed business to the low-rent streets either side of the Adelaide Markets.

      Reply
 
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