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July 15, 2008
The South Australian Government's decision is to put an independent assessment body in charge of all city projects worth more than $10 million. The Adelaide City Council's recent rejection of a $180 million building development in Franklin Street/Bentham Street in the CBD is given as one reason for the Rann Government's decision to move to keep Adelaide City Council out of planning decisions involving any development worth more than $10 million.
I do not know why the Adelaide City Council rejected the development proposal for the Franklin Street high rise apartments. I understand that the Development Assessment Commission recently rejected a multi-million-dollar office project for the corner of Franklin and Bentham Street in the city, known locally as Post Office Square, because it did not fit the publicly agreed planning guidelines.
The Council has been very pro development under Mayor Harbison, so I don't know why the State Government needs to make life easier for those developers who push the envelop by breaching the development rules that govern development in the city of Adelaide. The antiquated anti-development rhetoric of the Property Council makes little sense.
This City Council's record undercuts the claim by Paul Holloway, the Minister for Urban Development and Planning, that the Adelaide City Council wants to keep the City of Adelaide as a 19th century back water, and that such a position reflects the views of a few hundred voters. Holloway is spinning.He comes across as saying that any development is good because it is development.
It looks like a power grab to me; one based on knobbling local government (cut and dice is the phrase reportedly used by Holloway when addressing the Property Council) as it was done without any consultation or negotiation with the Adelaide City Council. The Rann Government comes across as becoming increasingly intolerant of democratic opposition and countervailing centres of power, rather than engaging in a public debate about what sort of city Adelaide should become with globalization and climate change.
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Gary,
I was in Adelaide last weekend. There is development happening everywhere in the western and southern parts of the CBD. You can sense the boom happening after 20 years of doldrums.
It sounds like a power grab to 'develop the parklands' for the petrol heads.