Premier Peter Malinauskas has confirmed that another area of your Park Lands will soon be handed over to private developers.
Pic: Tony Lewis / InDaily
Despite the death last month of property mogul Lang Walker, Premier Peter Malinauskas now admits his Government has not finished handing over your Public Open spaces to the late developer’s corporation.
There’s been no public consultation, no tender, nothing except secret negotiations behind closed doors, but Mr Walker’s heirs and shareholders are about to become much richer by building over land taken from Park 26 of your Park Lands.
Cabinet in confidence? Commercial in confidence? Whatever the excuse or the mechanism, your public open space will be lost, as the CBD keeps expanding into what is still legally your Park Lands.
It is commonplace for politicians to claim that Park Lands are “degraded” or “unused” or “inaccessible” to justify decisions to build over or destroy former or potential Open Green Public spaces.
Rarely do any politicians seek to inspire you by promising to restore, re-green, rehabilitate or restore any such areas of your Park Lands.
In February 2024, Premier Peter Malinauskas used this tired cliche again. Speaking at the opening of the “One Festival” tower, Mr Malinauskas admitted that a second tower would soon take over even more of the “public realm” which he categorised as “abandoned space.”
He admitted that a new tower would be coming, but that the State Government was haggling with Walker Corporation over the size of the tower and what, if any, public land might be permitted in the vicinity of the two towers.
InDaily has covered the story, but unfortunately omitted the crucial detail that this site is still legally part of your Park Lands. Read the InDaily story here: https://www.indaily.com.au/news/2024/02/08/government-haggles-with-walker-corp-over-second-festival-plaza-tower
Some people might say that it has been many years since the Festival Plaza ever looked like a Park, so the loss of Open Public Space should not be mourned. We call that a MYTH. Read our Myth-Buster #10 about old buildings on your Park Lands.
Background
The recent history of the former Festival Plaza has been a tale of successive State Governments (Labor and Liberal) handing over your land, and your public funds, so that developers can ransack what was originally part of your Park Lands.
Over the past 12 years, the former Festival Plaza, which was part of Tarntanya Wama (Park 26) has been carved up by commercial interests.
In 2012, the Government of former Premier Mike Rann rejected calls to return Festival Plaza to Park Lands. Instead, the Rann government did a private deal with Walker Corporation. In 2017 the Auditor-General slammed the former Government over the secrecy of the deal.
Since work began in 2018 it has taken almost six years to transform part of the your former Festival Plaza into what is now a new 29-storey “One Festival” tower.
During that time, the operators of the Adelaide Casino Hotel also got in on the Park Lands theft, by getting approval for their new hotel to extend onto former Open Public space next to Elder Park.
In the mid 2010s, it was only the Greens party (along with APA) who pushed back on this theft of public land, and campaigned for re-greening this former public space.
Here’s the 2015 story about how private developers got their hands on this priceless part of your Park Lands, along with a massive taxpayer subsidy:
Both major parties (Labor and Liberal) share blame for this. The initial deal was done by the former Labor Government of Jay Weatherill. The Liberal Government of Steven Marshall could have walked away from the deal after being elected in 2018, but allowed it to proceed.
In 2020 the then-Liberal Government even increased the size of the giveaway to the Walker Corporation, generously allocated even more taxpayer funds, to a total of $250 million and agreed to reduce the number of trees in the Walker Corporation plans. (Subscriber-only link to News Ltd story 21 April 2020)
In September 2022, after the election of the Malinauskas Labor government, Walker Corporation began a renewed push to get a second skyscraper approved.
In February 2024, Premier Peter Malinauskas admitted that a new tower would be coming, but that the State Government was haggling with Walker Corporation over the size of the tower and what, if any, public land might be permitted to remain in the vicinity of the two towers.
What was - and what might have been
The former Festival Plaza could have been easily and cheaply returned to your Park Lands.
A design competition for this purpose was run in 2015, by the then-leader of the Greens Party in SA, the Hon. Mark Parnell:
Design by Arnie Blanden - just one of the several winning designs in the 2015 competition hosted by then-Greens MLC Mark Parnell.
