Hook questions Labor’s investment in Festival Plaza
The State Government’s ousted infrastructure chief says he “doesn’t understand” why $90 million of taxpayers’ money is being kicked into Labor’s flagship “vibrant city” project – the Festival Plaza rebuild.
Rod Hook, who was involved in negotiations with the developer chosen to upgrade the plaza and carpark, says private capital was only sought for the plan because the Government couldn’t otherwise afford to fund the project, and if authorities had the money, “why wouldn’t we just rebuild the carpark?”
“I find it difficult to see what’s happened,” he told InDaily.
“I don’t understand the elements of the deal that have been done, and don’t understand why the Government is putting $90 million on the table, when I thought the deal was to reactivate the space by giving the private sector access to public land.”
Hook says when he was overseeing SA’s major projects as CEO of the Transport and Infrastructure Department, “we were dealing with the (festival) carpark that was crumbling and the Government had no money to do anything about it”.
The solution was to give a private developer – Lang Walker – access to build on or around the plaza “as a means of rebuilding the carpark and reactivating the space”.
Gifting the public land was, in effect, to be the Government’s contribution so, says Hook, “I’m still not sure what the deal is and why the Government is putting in $90 million”.
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The Weatherill Government has pledged $180 million towards a $610 million revamp of the precinct, $90 million of which has been earmarked for a Festival Centre upgrade. Walker Corporation will kick in the remaining $430 million, which it’s hoped will loosen the purse-strings for the long-awaited Adelaide Casino redevelopment next door.
But Hook – who was controversially sacked last year by Jay Weatherill after his Government was returned for a fourth successive term – suggested Walker’s contentious office block had significantly grown in scope since the original masterplan.
“We did talk about the potential for one taller building to activate the space on the Festival Plaza,” he said.
“In a sense, it’s got some similarities to what’s currently proposed … (but) I don’t think they had a 24 storey building in mind.”
He recalled the plan was for “something more like eight storeys”, saying “I don’t quite understand how that’s developed since then”.
He said Walker had originally insisted on two office towers but was bluntly told “that’s just not going to happen”.
Planning Minister John Rau said Hook’s questioning the Government’s injection of public money into the project was “a novel point, I think”.
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“It’s good value for money,” he said, “a substantial private investment in that part of the city, which will be transforming.”
He said the taxpayers’ dollar would only stretch so far, arguing “if you subtract from that $90 million the actual cost to the Government to build and then retain 400 of the 1500-odd carparks, that’s another $30-40 million”.
“If you then talk about how much it will cost to have a reasonable standard of amenities on the surface of the carpark — the plaza itself — there’s another substantial amount of money,” he said.
“So the idea the Government isn’t getting any value out of this is completely incorrect.”
He said if they’d simply ploughed public money into rebuilding the carpark “we’d still have a completely desolate plaza area with nothing on top of it at all”.
“If we’d just built a carpark and nothing else, that wouldn’t have achieved activation of that area,” said Rau.
“(Now) there will be private sector investment in some hundreds of millions of dollars in that area, which will transform the area next door and activate the space, put people in the place.”
He dismissed Hook’s recollection of the original plan for the office tower, saying the proposal was only completed last year, so “he wouldn’t have had any ideas really about the final design parameters”.
“Whatever his understanding was at the beginning, I don’t know,” he said.
Hook isn’t the first former stakeholder to question Labor’s “city vibrancy” public works agenda of late, with the one-time head of the shelved Integrated Design Commission Tim Horton lamenting plans for an Anzac Centenary Memorial Garden Walk as a glorified “footpath”.
“(Horton) does see himself as having a significant role in a great many things,” countered Rau.
“Whether those comments are helpful is in the eyes of the beholder.”
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