Old Royal Adelaide Hospital site unable to be given away by South Australian Government, park group says
Updated
A proposal to redevelop the old Royal Adelaide Hospital (RAH) into a tourism and residential hub will be unlikely to ever get off the ground, the Adelaide's Park Lands Preservation Association has predicted.
The South Australian Government yesterday revealed plans for the site including buildings up to 17 storeys high, a five-star hotel and more than 1,000 apartments.
Five heritage buildings would be retained and reused, while a third of the hospital's seven-hectare site would become part of the botanic gardens.
Adelaide's Park Lands Preservation Association (APPA) vice president Damien Mugavin said the plan required legislative changes that were unlikely to get through Parliament.
"So this land is all public land, it's part of the parklands," Mr Mugavin said.
"The Government under current legislation can't give it away. It has to go before Parliament.
"We are quite sure that [a] 17-storey commercial development on that site will never get through the State Parliament."
Mr Mugavin said heritage buildings should be reused for public uses such as for the proposed high school, the university or an art gallery.
"There has never been a successful proposition to put private residential development onto parkland," he said.
"This proposal is really so beyond the pale and would set a precedent that would be just disastrous for the future of the parklands."
APPA patron and former Labor premier Lynn Arnold said the Government had lost its way.
"This is moving it from its public access role at the present into the privatisation of parkland territory and I'm strongly opposed to that," he said.
APPA would find a 'problem with anything'
Minister for Housing and Urban Development Stephen Mullighan said APPA would "find a problem in anything the Government announces when it comes to the parklands".
He earlier told 891 ABC Adelaide that the current site was "pretty awful at the moment".
"It is incredibly built up. It is a really inaccessible site for the public and what it [the plan] also provides, it rips the site right open so that everyone can come and visit it," Mr Mullighan said.
He said feedback to the Government revealed people wanted activity on the site throughout the day and night.
A rooftop bar has been tipped for the existing helipad on top of the hospital.
Mr Mullighan said the plan would give the botanic gardens, the state's most visited destination, an opportunity to integrate into the North Terrace cultural boulevard.
Adelaide 'will need more apartments'
South Australian Property Council executive director Daniel Gannon said the need for more apartments in the city would continue to grow into the future and the site needed to be redeveloped.
"What we do know is that the population growth rate in the CBD will increase," Mr Gannon said.
"That's already growing at about 4 per cent every year which compares favourably with the rest of the state which is about 0.7 per cent.
"The reality is when we look at the existing Royal Adelaide Hospital site this is without any doubt ... one of the exciting development opportunities across the country right now.
"To the south [the site is] flanked by North Terrace which of course is Adelaide's Champs de Elysee and to the North is is flanked by the River Torrens."
Opposition Leader Steven Marshall said the plan was "uninspiring".
"We've been waiting almost a decade to see what the Government is going to do on this site and I think most people are feeling pretty underwhelmed," Mr Marshall said.
"We've got a real problem in South Australia in terms of jobs and our economy, we needed something which was going to create a real vision [to] bring people into our great state of South Australia".
Topics: urban-development-and-planning, community-and-society, states-and-territories, government-and-politics, adelaide-5000, sa
First posted
