#507
Post
by stumpjumper » Mon Sep 22, 2008 6:11 pm
In recent years, the fundamental problem of planning in the Adelaide City Council area has been a lack of certainty about the maximum developmental potential of sites. The Government has recently made two moves to reduce this uncertainty, not by imposing more strictly the existing legislation, but by reducing public scrutiny of large development proposals, and by widening access to the ultimate ‘fast track’ of Major Project status. In both cases the changes come at serious cost to transparency and to public participation in development decisions which will affect the community for years to come.
It’s common knowledge that the floor area limits (in the form of height limits and plot ratios) prescribed in the development legislation affecting Adelaide are becoming increasingly flexible.
The primary concern of a developer is to maximise profit by maximising floor area. To spell it out, from floor area comes net lettable floor area, thus rent income and property value for sale or borrowing against.
At one stage in Adelaide’s recent planning history, extra height or floor area could only be had by buying the unusable potential of heritage listed property in the same locality. This was the Transferable Floor Area or TFA scheme. It was administered by Adelaide City Council and it required adherence to the limits of the development plan to make the TFA worth paying for. A good example was the sale of the unusable development potential of listed Observatory House in Flinders Street to enable extra floors to be added to a nearby development. The scheme operated for a while in an orderly fashion, but it fell out of use after some new developments were given extra floor area without paying for it through the scheme. Who would want to pay for transferable floor area once that had happened?
So we were back to the old push and shove system. A developer will usually claim that its project merits more floor area than the development plan allows because of its special location or excellent design etc. Sometimes developers will throw in claims that their project is barely profitable even with extra floor area and they are only proceeding because they love South Australia etc. Lobbying of decision-makers, building personal relationships with them, offering design tradeoffs (eg setback for extra height), ‘ambit claims’ – fanciful but sacrificial amounts of floor area designed to allow apparent heavy concessions, and who knows, good old-fashioned payola in various forms, have become the order of the day.
In the case of the Le Cornu site, and contrary to the generally accepted story, five separate proposals have been approved by all concerned over the years. These proposals had the approval of ACC and the support of various residents’ interest groups (the North Adelaide Society, the North Adelaide Residents Group etc) as well as the local member of parliament (first Liberal Dr Michael Armitage then Labor Dr Jane Lomax-Smith).
Adelaide City Council, the residents groups and the MP’s were in favour of each project even though the proposals exceeded the limits prescribed in the City of Adelaide Development Plan on the basis that such a large amalgamated site could carry a taller centre than the much smaller average sites anticipated by the Plan, and provided there was careful attention to traffic and environmental impacts.
The reasons that neither the last, five storey proposal nor any of the earlier proposals was built are complex and not really possible to know fully. The proposals came from different owners: the property was sold from the original owner Le Cornu, which had amalgamated most of the site over many years, to the Oberdan group to the Wallis group to the Makris group. Each new proposal was differently configured and faced a different commercial environment. It’s possible that a subsequent buyer thought it could do better than the existing approved plan, perhaps thinking it had a better proposal or that it had more clout with council and could hope for a windfall profit by buying on the basis of x floor area and then building (or selling on) a proposal of x + y floor area.
To the present case. Once the Makris group had bought the site, it employed the best planning consultants available and used sophisticated marketing techniques to achieve its goal. The consultants used the media to good effect, and convinced Council to take the unprecedented step of using over $50,000 of ratepayers’ funds to conduct a survey of residents views before the Makris group had actually lodged a development application.
In 2007, Dr Lomax-Smith as local MP and as the newly-minted Minister for the City of Adelaide assured her ratepayer constituents at public meetings that she would object most strongly to any move by the government to give the local shopping centre and residential project the Major Project status originally designed to facilitate large infrastructure programs like the Roxby Downs/Olympic Dam mine expansion and the Tarcoola to Alice Springs rail line.
Council was keen, like everyone else, to see the site developed. North Adelaide had recently been declared a Heritage Conservation Zone and there were varying sensitivities at ACC about related design issues. Council also had to keep in mind the health of the CBD as a major retail precinct and the effect on its trade of a large, competing regional shopping facility on the doorstep of the CBD.
At this stage, the Makris group put before Council a proposal for a 9 level development, 200% over the limit prescribed in the development plan and including the glittering prize of the world’s only ‘seven star’ hotel outside Dubai. In my opinion the proposal was an ambit claim, with at least a couple of sacrificial storeys and other elements included to allow a credible concession by the developer.
Then, extraordinary events occurred which removed the ability of Council – whether its elected members, planning staff or its Development Assessment Panel - to have any further say in the matter; which neutralised Dr Lomax-Smith’s promises and which made the views of several thousand local residents irrelevant.
The Minister for Planning gave to the Makris group’s latest Le Cornu site proposal Major Project status, handing responsibility for its approval directly to himself. This was a first for a project of such modest size. Major Project status was designed to facilitate large programs of state infrastructure such as the Tarcoola to Alice Springs rail extension and the Roxby Downs/Olympic Dam mine development.
The criteria for declaring (or winning) Major Project status are set out in Section 46 of the Development Act – the project must (in the opinion of the Minister) be such that a declaration of Major Project is appropriate or necessary for the proper assessment of the development or a project must be of major environmental, social or economic importance – but the interpretation of those words and the decision itself to grant Major Project status is entirely at the discretion of the Minister, who is not obliged to give any reason, written or oral, for his or her decision.
Major Project status lessens if not eliminates the impact of the requirements of other legislation including council development plans, for example with respect to a precinct’s ‘Desired Future Character’ and so on.
The approval process for a Major Project is straightforward, and may be driven from the Minister’s office. It need not refer to a local council or residents. After assessment by a special Major Developments Panel (all but one members of which are selected by the Minister and only one of whom is required to have any specific experience, that being environmental conservation), and consideration of any reports the Minister has ordered, the Minister makes a recommendation to Cabinet which instructs the Governor to approve the project. There is no appeal from the Minister’s decision regarding a Major Project.
Fine if you’re the developer, not so good if you’re an adversely-affected objector to the development.
It’s impossible to say what induced the government to bestow on the Makris development the huge advantages of Major Project status.
By early 2008, the Makris group had donated to the state government at least $261,000 in cash (with $30,000 to the Opposition).
Dr Lomax-Smith now claimed that despite being the elected member for Adelaide and the Minister for the City of Adelaide she was not able to comment either on her own behalf or on that of her constituents regarding the contentious development in the centre of her electorate. Her masters in caucus must have calculated that she can retain her seat without the support of unhappy North Adelaide voters.
Yet further changes to the development approval system for the City of Adelaide were in the wind. These changes had their beginning in the rejection by ACC’s Development Assessment Panel of a proposal for ‘Tower 8’, part of the on-going Aspen group development on Franklin St for which Council’s Development Assessment Panel wanted some design adjustments.
Furious, the local branch of the Property Council (a private body representing the development industry) demanded that the government act to undo what had been done.
“When we heard about the decision,” Nathan Paine, Property Council director and former senior staffer to Planning Minister Holloway told a TV interviewer, “We certainly called the government and said, look, something absolutely needs to be done.”
Although since it was convened after the last Council election DAP had approved every large development application put to it prior to the Tower 8 proposal, the government immediately did the Property Council’s bidding. Within a week, the government had taken planning powers for large projects from Council, for North Adelaide as well as the CBD. The government’s (resident-free) Development Assessment Commission would now be the deliberating body for all projects over $10 million.
The decision delighted the development industry. It did not directly affect the Makris Le Cornu project which by this time was the beneficiary of coveted Major Project status, but it was proof of the government’s apparent intention to take the side at least for large projects of the development industry rather than residents and other third parties.
‘South Australia’s open for business!’ said Premier Rann in his slow New Zealand drawl.
To my knowledge, no other precinct in Australia has adopted a planning system like the one we now have for large projects in the City of Adelaide. Even Brisbane’s development-focused regime is the third party’s friend by comparison. The system which has been imposed on Adelaide denies the rights of third parties (neighbours, individuals or interested groups) to be heard or to appeal regarding what is built on their doorsteps; it is short on checks, balances and review; it is less transparent and more open to bribery and pressure from property owners and the property industry than the system it replaced; and it encourages results where profit comes first and public amenity comes last.
In mid-September 2008, the Governor approved the Makris group’s Major Project at the Le Cornu site. Mr Makris accepted the approval, although he claimed that after sacrificing three storeys the project was only marginally profitable but that he would continue with it only because of the affection he had for South Australia since arriving here alone at 16 etc.
In the days following, a celebratory editorial and articles appeared in the Advertiser including an article by Mr Makris himself in which he denied any allegations of bribery, saying that he only gave the government a quarter of a million dollars in cash because ‘everyone does it’. Makris has a point. Despite there being a statutory fund available to each party for electoral promotion, the Rann government has not needed it for the last six years, having amassed undisclosed millions of dollars in donations from the property industry.
The Rann government acknowledges the receipt of the money and its source, but denies any link whatever between receiving unspecified millions in cash from developers and bending planning decisions their way. As Mr Makris says, giving away large amounts of money for no return must just be in the profligate nature of developers, just something that ‘everyone does’. Why property developers would give away so much more money to the party in power than to the opposition must remain a perplexing mystery, too.
Makris continues to claim that at six stories the O’Connell Street project has been reduced to marginal profitability by an obstructive minority of North Adelaide residents who share with Adelaide City Council a ‘hidden agenda’ against him. Mr Makris has also praised the project as a massive win for South Australia, the people of North Adelaide and for the city – having had the best people in the state working on the design for a year.
The truth of Mr Makris’ claims about bribery and profitability may be known only to Mr Makris. He will not elaborate on the ‘hidden agenda’ of the residents and Council (what could such a hidden agenda be – anti-Greek? Anti the Labor government to which he has paid $261,000 in cash?).
On his last point, concerning the design of his development, if Mr Makris has been paying the best people in South Australia to work on the design for a year, all they’ve been doing is recycling drawings by New Zealand architects Ignite.
The eclectic style of the Makris proposal for the North Adelaide site has nothing to do with the character of the declared conservation zone in which it would be built, although Mr Makris makes the fair claim that it matches the style of the building across the road – another Makris development with its signature trans-Tasman spiked domes and strange detailing.
Generally, the appearance of the approved Makris project owes a lot to an out-of-date architectural fad called the Portman style, named after a series of garish 1980’s resort hotels featuring the same overblown decoration and constructed in Europe, the USA and the odd holiday island for a few years. I have taught design to architecture students, and I can honestly say that if any of my students had presented that sort of worn-out and derivative pastiche as a design for new shopping and residential development anywhere in Australia, let alone in a heritage conservation zone, I would ask them to reconsider and try to come up with something better. Nothing’s all bad, though; the highly articulated frontages should let better than the boring plate glass and brushed aluminium shopfronts which developers have been offering retailers of late.
Nonetheless, even before a brick has been laid, Planning Minister Holloway apparently has reservations about the design he has approved. He has offered an assurance that there will be ‘screening’, and provision for climbing plants to grow over parts of the building to diminish its impact.
As architect Frank Lloyd Wright said, ‘A surgeon buries his mistakes; all an architect can do is advise his client to grow vines.’
In any case, the design for the Makris proposal appears to have been cloned from a very similar Ignite architects Portman-inspired project, The Chancery in Auckland, New Zealand. The Chancery project is itself a blatant copy of part of Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, California. (Have these people no shame??)
Copying a design from another project has the merit of being very economical for the developer, as the state government found when it copied from an American original the black and silver Riverside Centre it built on cheap land next to the Convention Centre on North Terrace.
I suggest that the only reason the local chapter of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects has not publicly objected to the design of the Makris proposal is that it appears to have a spineless policy of not commenting negatively on any project that may involve one of its members, and it’s likely that a local architect will have some minor role if Makris builds his proposal.
So to the present. I suggest that the true cost of the Government’s appeasing Makris with Major Project status and bowing to the Property Council by removing Adelaide City Council’s power to assess projects over $10 million has been to compromise the entire urban planning process.
How can anyone be sure of any planning regulation in any council’s development plan after this? I have a client who is developing a site in a leafy inner south-western suburb. He joked that he will ring Minister Holloway to ask how much he has to pay to go from two dwellings to three on his site. Why shouldn’t he?
This style of development management makes it hard to address long-term problems affecting an area, such as the proliferation in O’Connell Street of changes of use to create cafes, none of which has had to provide parking for the patrons they attract. With the business and residential community kept distant from the decision-making and with little direct input, where is the motivation for responsible planning, for example the provision of needed public parking, perhaps behind retail tenancies, similar to the ‘hospital parking’ behind townhouses on nearby Pennington Terrace.
Anyway, a good argument can probably be made for DAC to oversee, with safeguards, large developments in the CBD because that precinct has a unique status as the state’s centre of business, but to remove local participation in planning of similar projects in the residential and local commercial suburb of North Adelaide, which is only part of the ACC for historical reasons and could just as well be administered by Prospect or Walkerville Councils, is outrageous.
In acceding to the demands of the Property Council, the Government’s decision to leave any future large-scale development in almost entirely residential North Adelaide to the government’s DAC rather than Council’s DAP (or even to Major Project status) is unsettling, in urban planning terms. $10 million is not much towards a multi-level development. Years ago, architect Ian Hannaford warned of the need to prevent North Adelaide from becoming an urban disaster - a shaded inner slum ringed by expensive high rises with park views, yet the recent change promotes rather than prevents that future.
There are very few precedents for stripping local governments of planning powers except in cases of serious dysfunction or malfeasance. It happened temporarily years ago in Hobart, when the Salamanca Place/Constitution Dock wharf precinct was being redeveloped. The Tasmanian government took over responsibility for planning the wharf redevelopment because there were concerns that the council was be vulnerable more than the state government to pressure from property owners and the development industry to get around the regulations, and it was felt that only the government could be trusted to balance the public and other interests involved,
In simultaneously sidelining Council’s DAP for large developments and in broadening Major Project qualifications we’ve taken a wrong turn in managing development in the City of Adelaide. From here the road, especially for the residents will only get rougher.
By overturning a workable, representative and reasonably transparent planning system with clear rights and avenues of appeal in favour of new, protected pathways to success for well-funded members of a powerful property industry, the government has discounted the rights and views of residents and their duly elected council.
The new system may favour the supporters of the Makris proposal this time, but a non-representative, less than transparent planning system has a tendency towards corruption and can cut both ways.
The government’s insistence that we don’t need an independent commission against corruption in this state because there are already sufficient internal safeguards may not be enough to avoid big trouble ahead.
Last edited by
stumpjumper on Thu Sep 25, 2008 11:48 am, edited 8 times in total.
