Inside Rundle Mall’s redevelopment
Inside the tattered green netting that fences off large sections of Rundle Mall, construction workers are preparing for a one-in-100 year flood.
The hardhat squad have torn up most of the Mall’s patchy fabric, revealing thick mud beneath.
The dark red terra is now being covered by thick concrete slabs, before a final layer of heavily machined granite. And through it all, a thin stormwater drain winds. It’s designed to cope with that once-in-a-century flood: with current drainage, if we’re hit by a serious flood all of the Mall’s shopfronts will be ruined.
The granite pavers are 80 millimetres thick, and are being laid on a 150mm concrete slab. About 1600 square metres of paving have been laid so far. The old Mall’s pavers were 40mm and were laid on a soft base, often sand. Because of that, heavy use often led them to move – lending the Mall its bumpy surface.
If you looked for it, you’d see that the old Mall’s surface was really just a paved road. The Mall rises up on the sides – where the sidewalk used to be – and then dips into gutters, before rising again in the centre, just like a road. The new Mall will be laid as a large V, with very slight slopes from either side into the centre.
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The construction crew lay the concrete slab by first segmenting the Mall off into squares with a wooden framework. Wire is then laid, and concrete poured over the wire – which helps give the concrete strength and structure.
This is the first time since the Mall was built that it’s had a from-scratch rebuild. All the other works over the years have been band-aid fixes, the current team claims, leaving a patchwork legacy. All that has been ripped up now, giving the council a clean slate from which to work.
The Mall’s new trees are only saplings at the moment, but the council predicts they won’t take too long to reach maturity. The trees – 48 Chinese Elms – will grow to about 6 or 7 metres, and it’s expected they’ll cast a lot more shade on the Mall than the 27 plane trees they’re replacing.
They’ve been placed in soil-filled planter boxes, which actually drop down and run beneath the Mall. The planter boxes have concrete walls which will hopefully stop the elms’ roots spreading and pushing up the pavers.
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Three different colours of pavers have been used: light grey for the major walkways, and two darker shades for areas where the benches (including new single-person benches) and rubbish bins will be. There will be twice as many seats as in the current Mall, designed to slow down foot traffic and make people linger longer – and, of course, spend more.
The darker shades were picked for those areas because the council expects people sitting on the seats to drop food; the darker tile will make food stains and litter less visible.
One thing of which the construction team is very proud is the new Mall’s straight lines. Apparently it’s very tricky getting pavers to line up perfectly all the way along the Mall, but that’s what they’ve done here – long, uninterrupted lines.
The Mall’s old pavers will be crushed up and turned into roadfill.
Interestingly, civil construction firm CATCON decided to purchase 205 North Terrace for their Rundle Mall site office. The company plans to turn the derelict building into a residential or commercial development within the next few years.
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