[COM] Victoria Square Upgrade - $24m

[stelaras]

Some info on tandanya that you may find interesting!

attached below are the links:

http://www.history.sa.gov.au/history/ad ... istory.pdf

the below link is a little bit more detailed:

http://www.environment.sa.gov.au/botani ... ultsig.pdf

[rhino]

So the name Tandanya refers to a site south of Adelaide and associated with Red Kangaroo Dreaming. Not Victoria Square. It seems that it is, however, a Kaurna word.

Thanks Stelaras.

[bmw boy]

honestly it doesnt really matter... lets not let this thread get sidetracked into aborigional history & culture lol

but for the record its Tandanyangga

[dragonfly]

I'll tell you what's next for Victoria Square....Dragonfly Bar + Dining, opening this Wednesday 11th July:

Dragonfly Bar + Dining will open its doors on Wednesday 11th July, reintroducing long-overdue excitement and vitality to the true heart of Adelaide; Victoria Square. Dragonfly is the project of Jody Brennan, Leah Klemm, Mark Ewan, Michael Diakomichalis and Evan Hayes, an eclectic group of 5 friends from various backgrounds. They all share a mutual obsession with good food, wine, art and music. Inspired by years of experience and fun in the hospitality, design and music industries, coupled with overseas journeys of discovery, they are reflecting their passions through this project.

The group decided to open Dragonfly when the old Tokyo Joe’s Sushi Bar site in Victoria Square became available. “We could all see the vast, un-tapped potential of Victoria Square as a destination rather than a thoroughfare” says co-manager Jody. Located in the Northwest quadrant of Victoria Square, (an area normally known for its lunchtime cafes), Dragonfly can cater for 80 people inside and 20 people outside, with views of the city and Square.

The new interior fit-out faithfully reflects the group’s unique, eclectic mix of opinion and taste. “Though we all had different ideas of what the space should be, it fell into place during the design process through a unified vision and we’re all extremely happy with the result,” says Leah, co-manager and interior designer. “My biggest joy was being able to design the space with full creative control. It is an extension of our own living spaces.”

There are two key elements to the project; a licensed bar and a dining experience. As a licensed space, Dragonfly will take on a bar atmosphere into the evening hours, offering boutique beers, wines and spirits from Australia as well as selected imported varieties. On offer is an impressive range of local and international bottled beers, complemented by Asahi and Bohemian Pilsner on tap. The wine list is simple and features a considered selection of 20 wines, most of which are available by the glass. Head Bartender, Evan Hayes (part-owner, La Boheme Bar), has created a striking, elegant cocktail list, which includes the classics, as well as some of his own creations. “The Rouge Boy is definitely a winner” says Evan “ but I can’t tell you the origins of the name; it’s far too long-winded; perhaps we’ll include the stories in the cocktail list one day”. Fresh juices, fine-quality coffee, hot chocolate and an extensive range of loose-leaf teas round off a comprehensive list of beverage options.

Executive Chef Mark Ewan (Jolley’s, Tin Cat Café, Royal Oak, Crown & Sceptre, Botanic Café), has designed a startlingly simple, yet exciting menu, with a focus on providing healthy, delicious food, drawing inspiration from Japanese, Spanish and Italian cuisine. “We are really taking advantage of the range of local produce, particularly from the Adelaide Central Markets, one of the finest food markets in the world and the Fleurieu Peninsula”, says Mark, whose concept centres around the creation of tapas-style treats, inspired regional dishes, Japanese street food and retro cakes + sweets. The menu will cater for individual dining, but also encourage a shared group experience. The full dining menu will be available most days from lunch (including take-away “bento” style), throughout the day and well into the evening.

“During the day, Dragonfly is a little urban hiding place, similar to the unique, special utopias of yesteryear we used to go to, like The Coffee Pot, Ruby’s Café and the old State Library Café; places in which you could “disappear”. You can be with friends, or alone and read a good book for a couple of hours with some delicious treats and a drink or two.” says Michael, Dragonfly’s entertainment manager. “On Friday and Saturday nights, you can be guaranteed all the charm of the daytime atmosphere with the added bonus of Adelaide’s most innovative live acts and DJs.” Michael, Jody and Mark perform together in Adelaide as the Doki Doki DJs and will appear regularly at Dragonfly.

An equally important focus of the Dragonfly group is to encourage local artists and musicians by providing a space to exhibit and perform their works. “Art exhibitions and music will play an important role in developing and evolving the identity of Dragonfly,” says Jody who will curate the exhibits.

Dragonfly will be open Tuesday to Saturday from midday til midnight (3am on Fridays and Saturdays).
193 Victoria Square, Adelaide 5000. Phone: 08 8212 5661
http://www.dragonflybar.net.au

[urban]

Great work Dragonfly. Finally some night time activity on Victoria Square.

It would be great to see the treatment provided to that corner of the square applied to the 2 corners on the eastern side of the square.

[Will]

Is this Dragonfly bar going to be located in the MLC Building?

I wish you luck, however it would be a good idea to talk with the owners of the building, and look into installing some kind of lighting on the facade. That corner of Victoria Square in particular is very dark and uninviting at night. With the MLC building being heritgae listed you may even get help from the council with a grant or something.

[stelaras]

Goodluck DragonFly with the venture!

I shall check it our when im next in town!

[Bulldozer]

However, my biggest issue with this topic is everyone's insistance of building huge extensive public transport routes to carry people across the square and to various suburban regions. As i said we must be realistic. Adelaide is only a small city with a population of approx. 1,138,000 (total population of approx. 1,515,000).

Large underground subways (metro's) will not be a viable option in Adelaide for quite some time. NO Government (labor, liberal or other) will build such a thing just because they want to forward plan 50-100 years when the population and patronage will be large enough to use it.

My limited understanding of city planning and development (whether it is private investor driven or government driven) is based on profit margins. At the end of the day they/we all want to make money. Currently, the Public transport patronage in Adelaide is 15.3 % which equates to approx. 170,000 people out of approx. 1.1 million using public transport on a regular basis.

Does anyone here actually think that 170,000 people can support such huge infrastructure??? i think not (unless u ramp up the prices so high, that it wouldn't make sense to use PT)

I'm not advocating building a huge subway system, just a simple straight-through tunnel. I don't think Adelaide (the square mile) is large enough to need more than one rail station. If the population grows at 1% a year then in 25 years there'll be 1.45 million people with 223,000 using public transport if the utilisation rate stays at just 15%. If utilisation doubles to 30% then there will be almost 450,000 using it! Digging up roads will be more expensive and inconvenient then as well, so best to get it out of the way ASAP. It's interesting to note that there's a rail line in Perth that carries more passengers each day than Adelaide's entire rail system. Perth is a great example of how popular public transport can become if you invest in building an efficient and modern system.

I think the beauty of my idea is that the route should make it possible to build a relatively cheap cut-and-fill subway and it wouldn't require any major changes to the existing rail network. You'd do it when overhauling the rail network to electric traction and standard-guage lines and it'd be as simple as digging a big ditch down the middle of the road, pouring in some concrete or dropping in prefab sections then backfilling. (Yes, it's exaggerated.) You don't even have to go the whole hog - you could do it in stages over a number of years. The first stage would be down Grote Street and the station under the square. Then the second or third stages could then be down the other side of town to the O-Bahn/Modbury rail line and the loopback tunnel.

You don't have to include the bus tunnels either if you plan on not bringing busses into the city centre in the future by extending the tram network into the inner suburbs. My thinking though is to integrate suburban and intra/interstate bus and rail services into the one central complex... just think how great that would be for tourism!

As for it costing too much or Adelaide not having the population base, soes anyone honestly think that if the Mt Bold system was proposed today that it would get built? I'm not talking just about the reservoir, but the Murray-Onkaparinga pipeline, Clarendon weir and aqueduct to the Happy Valley reservoir. Big, bold and forward-looking projects are a vote of confidence in the city and show its people that there is a bright future ahead for not just themselves, but their children and grandchildren. Remember how exciting it was to see our last big civil engineering project, the Hills Freeway and tunnels, being built?

[jimmy_2486]

Smart thinking there bulldozer, when you said we should upgrade our roads now while our population is low. The higher our population gets, the more annoying road expansions will be.

I mean when you think about it, if we focus more on upgrading our roads now, people will still (after its all done) use PT even though driving to the city for work will be a bit quicker.

Reason why a lot of us catch PT is because parking in the city is quite pricey. Our traffic is not really that bad, its bearable.

I'm not saying to neglect our PT, but to focus just as heavily on our roads before our population grows any more.

[stelaras]

Dozer

Well said, and for the record im not trashing your thoughts or ideas!

I think those ideas are logical, well thought out and very doable.

Anyway, The point i was trying to illustrate is that no government will build such a thing, or even prepare to build such a thing for the future, because there are not enough people using PT.

The problem is that governments are not progressive thinkers. They want to be seen as doing something without actually doing something. Forward planning for anything past 1.5-2 election periods is seldom seen, simply because they may not be in power long enough. (look at our wise and noble (cough, splutter, laugh!!!) federal leader John Howard. How many climate change issues has he dealt with in 10 years of government? How many water issues has he dealt with in 10 years of power? Zippo, nada, nothing, zilch. The reason why, it takes too long to fix such problem!

The patronage will have to rise to at least 30% and maybe 40% in order for them to BEGIN to think about this. One must draw parallels from the Melbourne and Sydney systems, where the train system is running at 100% of capacity for the last 5 years (because of increased patronage) and yet the state governments do nothing to alleviate the pressures.

[stelaras]

Reason why a lot of us catch PT is because parking in the city is quite pricey.

Jimmy 15% patronage is not a lot of people catching public transport! Especially, when there are just over 1 million people living in the city. Its only about 170,000 people. There are that many people in other states (like Perth) that use just 1 train line in a day!

As for parking, trust me mate, Adelaide city parking is very cheap compared to the eastern seaboad. You don't see anything under $3.50 per hour for street parking in the melbourne CBD. Unless you get in at sparrows fart ($12 flat rate before 730am), the least you will pay for all day parking in the Melbourne CBD undercover parking is roughly $25.00 per day (thats dodgy brothers prices) Something a little more secure, will cost you around $35.00 per day.

You do the Math for 5 days parking and factor in your cars running costs and see how expensive that is per week!

You can still park your car all day at centrepoint car park in the heart of the city and not need to rob a bank to pay for your car park space!

[AG]

Parking in Adelaide is quite cheap. Sydney CBD parking prices are about 4 times what we pay here in some carparks. Parking is never really hard to find either because there are so many parking spaces.

There are two ways we can look at the public transport situation:
1. Noone is going to use any expansions in the public transport system because almost noone currently uses it anyway.
2. There's a lot of potential for the public transport network because hardly anyone uses it.

Same situation, different response. Adelaide certainly has the population base to support heavier use of public transport, through commuter rail and bus, but not metro systems, and it should be encouraged. Neither Sydney or Melbourne have metro systems (although Sydney is looking into one), but Sydney has been operating it's metro style operation City Circle since the 1910s (only 2 stations actually existed then, it was completed in 1956) when it's population was still less than 2 million. Melbourne has also been operating a metro style operation in the CBD with it's City Loop since the 1980s. Adelaide could certainly support this sort of operation in the CBD in deep level tunnels, although that would require some real will from the government and support from the public.

The issue with increasing congestion on the roads is a combination of inefficient use and lacking road capacity, although the latter is often blamed for the congestion. Most vehicles out on the roads have no more than a driver in it, and most Adelaide commuters have never heard of the zipper effect, carpooling or pay attention to changes at traffic signals and road conditions. Part of this does come down to poor road design and layout, however.

Bringing in a transport hub to Victoria Square could bring a lot of activity to the area if it was done correctly. However, if overdone, Victoria Square could become much like how Town Hall in Sydney has become, little more than people passing through to get from A to B with the square being the destination of few.

EDITTED: Very bad english from myself.

[dragonfly]

Is this Dragonfly bar going to be located in the MLC Building?

I wish you luck, however it would be a good idea to talk with the owners of the building, and look into installing some kind of lighting on the facade. That corner of Victoria Square in particular is very dark and uninviting at night. With the MLC building being heritgae listed you may even get help from the council with a grant or something.

Dragonfly is located two doors down from MLC; in a 19th Century two storey building.
Lighting at this point is not too bad. There are street lamps along this strip. At night, we will have outdoor seating, security on weekends and we believe its close enough to the KW St footpath to create a buzz and entice people over.

Hope to see you all there!

[jk1237]

will have a look at this dragonfly bar, sounds good.
Just regarding the prior posts, it irks me when I hear people going on about Adelaide not having the population to support projects. Can I just say that even by American standards, a city of over 1 million people constitutes a 'large city', so its time we all start thinking that we do live in a large city, and develop a good public transport system. I believe that Adelaide is far big enough to support an underground city loop for our train system. It only needs to be 2 tunnels, 1 for south bound trains, 1 for north/west bound trains, so we dont have this dead end station situation

[urban]

Adelaide has the population for large projects. Unfortunately because of our extremely low density we have to spend our infrastructure money over a very large area. For example we are now spending $500mil on the Northern Expressway (with fed help) to replicate the Salisbury Hwy. That money could have undergrounded the entire South Rd or upgraded the rail system and relocated the train station to vic sq.

We waste a lot of money subsidising poor quality housing on the fringes of the city. The same money spent on quality low cost housing such as the Whitmore Sq project around train stations would inject much needed vitality to the inner urban areas and provide the critical mass needed to justify upgrading our public transport networks.

Gothenburg is a city of 400,000 people and they have recently undergrounded the freeway that used to run the length of the city (approx 5km) along the banks of the port. This road effectively separated the city from the waterfront.