Sensational-Adelaide.com

Six hectares of the Fort Largs police academy land at Taperoo is to be sold for housing.

The sale is part of a plan for a new $59 million police academy at the site.

The Police Minister, Michael Wright, says the land sale will help pay for the academy redevelopment.

"It's about 6.38 hectares that will be sold off and in regard to what proportion it will be, obviously we're not going to disclose what our market price may well be, but it's obviously fairly prime real estate in this area and we would expect a significant return," he said.

The South Australian police commissioner, Mal Hyde, says currently a lot of land at the academy is not used.

"Somebody said to me 'the academy's going to be smaller because ... the land available is going to be smaller', that's not the way to look at it," he said.

"It's about building a facility which is going to be necessary for what you need, we've got a lot of land here that we just don't use."

Mr Hyde says the new academy will have a gymnasium, accommodation block, teaching auditorium and scenario village, which will have a replica bank to help cadets with their training.

He says the redevelopment will be finished by the end of 2011.

"I think it's really an excellent proposal and I don't think there's any deficiencies because we may not have the same amount of open space," he said.

The mayor of Port Adelaide and Enfield, Gary Johanson, says any housing development on the Fort Largs site will have to skirt around heritage-listed buildings.

"I think a good quality development would certainly be of benefit to the sea front, it is certainly dated, some of those old cream brick buildings that are there," he said.

"Some of it though is definitely heritage, that would obviously be preserved there."

The Government has also announced it has extended Mr Hyde's contract for another three years.

monotonehell wrote:Xaragmata, I really enjoy your photos, both new and old, but I have a request. Could you only put the pretty green frames on the historical ones? As it confuses poor Wayno.

Wayno wrote:

monotonehell wrote:Xaragmata, I really enjoy your photos, both new and old, but I have a request. Could you only put the pretty green frames on the historical ones? As it confuses poor Wayno.

ouch! *crawls under desk*

monotonehell wrote:Xaragmata, I really enjoy your photos, both new and old, but I have a request. Could you only put the pretty green frames on the historical ones? As it confuses poor Wayno.

Heh - I could probably change the frames if I knew what I was doing ...

I've been following this site for what seems like ages, are they finally underway?

Brando wrote:Work should begin on this one after Easter monday.