by Shane Sody

The City Council is consulting for a second time, about sports buildings on your Park Lands.

Almost a year ago, in November 2023 the City Council put out a draft policy for consultation.

The Adelaide Park Lands Association was critical of this first attempt for failing to suggest any limit on the extent to which more and more of your Open Green Public Park Lands might be lost under a proliferation of new “community sport” buildings.

Now, the City Council is having another go at getting the balance right, but has once again failed to address this core issue.

Lip service

There are elements of the proposed policy that appear to recognise the public interest in maintaining access to your ‘Open, Green Public’ Adelaide Park Lands. For example, the draft policy’s Objectives include:

Objective 1 – Maximise investment and community benefits by consolidating buildings and creating shared-use facilities and amenities accessible to the public.

Objective 2 – Enable the provision of Community Buildings that fulfil their intended purpose, with a building footprint and scale, that minimises the impact on the Adelaide Park Lands.

[our emphasis]

Consolidating some of the many scattered old Park Lands sports buildings into fewer, higher-quality new buildings seems to be something that would have widespread community support.

However the newly-revised Draft Policy does not specify that the process of consolidation should result in more Open, Green, Public space. On the contrary, it still fails to include any mechanism to prevent a proliferation of new, larger sports buildings.

It proposes no limits on the number or size of new sports buildings. An associated document, a Council “engagement pack” even quotes a view that “no net loss of Park Lands” is “unrealistic”.

Here is the Council’s page with its new draft policy https://ouradelaide.sa.gov.au/park-lands-community-buildings

There is a separate, related Council report on investment required for community building upgrades, but that “investment” report has been declared “confidential” and will not be made available while the Council undertakes this public consultation.

What can you do?

You can respond to the Council’s draft policy.

Lodge your comment at this page: https://ouradelaide.sa.gov.au/park-lands-community-buildings

Consultation closes at 5pm on Monday 14 October.

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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https://adelaideparklands.m-pages.com/YWRrGW/adelaide-park-lands-assn-mailing