Discussion: Development of Adelaide Railyards

[skyliner]

I hope the new locality will be north tce.

ADELAIDE - TOWARDS A GREATER CITY SKYLINE

[Omicron]

Time for my mad diagram skillz, yo.

Here are some key diagrams from the New RAH masterplan to help with the Casino relocation possibilites:




What those two maps essentially show is that the RAH development is confined to the blue area, as owned by TransAdelaide, which I understand to be a State-owned entity. As the Victoria Park Grandstand saga proved, the State Government seeking ownership of Council (yellow) land for its own construction purposes (or in this case, handing it to a private enterprise) is fraught with difficulties. Logically, then, one would assume that any negotiations between the Government and SkyCity regarding the location of a new Casino site would be confined to the blue areas over which it has far more power.

Based on what I can gather from the masterplan (which doesn't yet include a site plan detailing the location of buildings), I assume that the easternmost point of the building and an access roadway will line up with somewhere between Gray and George Streets, or in other words, between the middle of UniSA City West and just east of the Rivera Motor Inn. Assuming more space for the hospital than less, that leaves you with this red area of State land to play with:



Which, when combined with the little strip of land east of the Morphett St. bridge beside the convention centre, gives a total area of:



Relative to the current site, that's one hell of an improvement in the context of land area. Plenty of room for large floorplates, if you will, which I assume to be the main issue with SkyCity's current location. Height restrictions are another matter entirely - falling within the boundaries of the parklands, I doubt if the Council has a specific height limit applicable simply because there hasn't been a need to have one for that area. I'd love to know what the situation was for the Hyatt, but as we know from photographs taken from approaches to Adelaide Airport, this site is probably closer to the flight path and hence even more at the mercy of those delightfully mysterious LOL-POPS or SNO-COPS or whatever they are.

The relocation of SkyCity is increasingly making the whole ASER development and the Festival Centre look like outdated pudding cups. That blasted Festival Plaza is holding us back so much, with prime KWS, North Tce, Torrens, Festival Centre and Railway Station access wasted on a dreadful, dreadful monument to outdated (and painfully unusable) mid-century urban design.

[Wayno]

The OLS height limit near morphett st bridge is 80-90m, that's height above sea level (from ACC Development Plan - page 438).

Interestingly, even the ACCs own dev plan has defined land set aside for the Hospital! (page 463 - pikkie below)

14.JPG (47.99 KiB) Viewed 3764 times

[UrbanSG]

Yes, the Festival Plaza is such a poor example of public space, even after the recent upgrade, especially for such a prime position. No one wants to go there and for good reason. It is such a cold and harsh environment. For almost 24 hours a day you will struggle to find a single person in the area directly north of Parliment House. Here is an aerial view in all its ugly 70's glory (they can't even maintain the gardens properly):



Back to the western railyards area and a possible Casino relocation, lets not forget Adelaide City Council's Torrens Riverpark Masterplan, which is just that a masterplan. It appears it will only occur well into the future if at all:

[monotonehell]

I think the biggest reason the Festival Plaza and associated areas are devoid of people most of the time is more to do with their remoteness from the daytime activities which are more centred around the areas south of North Tce. Any sort of public space that far removed is going to suffer the same fate during the day. If SkyCity moved further west on North Tce I bet we'll see the surrounding area mostly deserted during the day as well.

The only reason Melbourne's Federation Square works is that it's right up against the CBD, it's an equally barren and inhuman space to our "beloved" 70's Festival Plaza. Look at the Docklands, they're mostly deserted for most of the time these days.

Casinos only draw in the crowds at night and on weekends. Sports stadia only draw in the crowds while an event is on. If we want 24/7 vibrancy we need to place these spaces where they benefit from a blend of temporally complementary activities.

Public spaces need to be near the public.

[stumpjumper]

Quite right, monotone.

I have reservations about the siting of the hospital, not about the need for a better or renovated hospital - that's a question for experts.

Given that the TA site is Park Lands which was leased to TA, and that it is at the NW gateway to the city, I would say that to put a more or less non-public utility building like a hospital on such an important site is a degraded use of the site in urban design terms.

The big appeal of the site to the government is not that it is the perfect site for a hospital; the appeal is that the land does not have to be paid for, nor can it be sold for other purposes. In short, the government thinks the land is not only free, but its use will not deny any income from its sale.

No further discussion on the site was entered into, hence the embarrassing revelation that a neighbouring 'landowner' (ACC) has not been squared off.

It's a useful exercise to imagine that the proposal is put to a class of urban design students. How would you mark them for selecting the TA site for a hospital?

Would an extension of the Torrens Lake (as proposed some years ago by Mayor Harbison and architect Rob Cheesman) and a sloping recreational park from Uni of SA to the river be a mmore appropriate use of the land reclaimed from TA?

That's only one alternative of many. The driving aim, though, was to find a cheap site for the hospital, not to find the best use for the TA land.

[Prince George]

Stumpjumper, this post feels like you're switching horses in mid-stream. It starts with you agreeing with Mono, who has just said that the festival plaza is too isolated from the CBD to be an effective public space, but by the middle you're re-floating the "sloping recreation park" idea for the railyard site. If anything, the western end of North Terrace is an even greater barrier than the central section. By the time they get to that end of the Terrace, people seem to be losing their patience a little and are racing to reach the commuter version of "escape velocity". And if I understand corretly the work that's being done for the tramline extension, the road was widened rather than losing a lane, which makes it six or seven lanes, plus tram-tracks, plus parking. And to cap it off, the location is even further from our population's centre-of-gravity. Would we give our hypothetical students a high mark for a park or plaza design at that site?

[Professor]

The rail yards are pretty awful so anything that better utilises this area of teh CBD would be good. The Torrens Riverbank is so quiet compared to (say) Southbank and it is a pity that the river walk and setting is not better utilised.
The tram line is going in fast though with the station near the corner of North and West Tce well underway. It could even be finished around the State election time...