by Shane Sody

The Adelaide City Council has backed the State Government’s gift to private developer, Walker Corporation of a second massive new office tower on the former Festival Plaza in your Park 26.

Earlier this year, Premier Peter Malinauskas confirmed that without any tender or electoral mandate, the Government had done a private deal to hand over a second part of your Festival Plaza to the Walker Corporation for a huge new office building, that would tower over Parliament House.

During October 2024, Planning SA purported to seek public comment on this.

APA chose not to make any submission on the size of the office tower proposed for Festival Plaza. We saw no reason to participate in such a charade when the real decisions have already been made behind closed doors, between developers and State Government Ministers.

However the Adelaide City Council DID participate.

Its submission to Planning SA makes some very obvious points, seemingly arguing against the Planning Code amendment. The Council’s submission said that the Government’s plan:

• “reduces the integrity of the potential World Heritage attributes of the Adelaide Park Lands and City Layout, threatening the feasibility of attaining World Heritage status; and

• “unreasonably impact[s] the National Heritage Values of the place relating to views and vistas and compromises the juxtaposition between the city and the Adelaide Park Lands that form part of the [National Heritage] Listing.”

Nevertheless, the Council’s submission seems to suggest that the solution to these problems is to ensure that the second tower is no higher than the existing, new Festival Tower:

“The City of Adelaide submits the second tower should respond to the dominant height of Tower 1 rather than being the dominant height.”

In other words, the Council’s submission effectively argues that 40-storeys is too high, but no more than 29 storeys would be appropriate.

You might be wondering how a part of your Park Lands (i.e. the former Festival Plaza in Park 26) can be approved for construction of an office tower, as if your Park Lands were commercial land.

The short answer is that the State Government simply tears up the rule book, and writes new rules about your Park Lands whenever it wants to do so.

The story of Festival Plaza over the past decade has been a tale of crony capitalism, where secret negotiations led to a private developer getting the rights to your public space, and a handout of $260 million of taxpayer funds as well.

The State Government is backing Walker Corporation to get a second tower.

It is disappointing that the City Council is not prepared to push back in defence of your world-unique Adelaide Park Lands.

The author of this article, Shane Sody, is the President of the Adelaide Park Lands Association and the editor of the semi-monthly newsletter, "Open Green Public".

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