CHRIS THOMSON

EXCLUSIVE RELATED STORY: SECOND PORT FLOATED FOR COOGEE.

The cost of redeveloping the delapidated South Fremantle power station will be staggering according to its owner Verve Energy.

Verve’s General Manager, Corporate Services, Derek Noakes has told a hearing into the redevelopment of the Cockburn coast that the landmark building would cost $46 million just to make watertight.

“I have been told anecdotally that it would be cheaper to demolish it and build it again,” Mr Noakes was recorded as telling the hearing in minutes released today.

“In particular … the complete absence of windows, the fact that most of the window frames are metal, and the building is in an advanced state of decay with concrete cancer, extensive graffiti and other damage, vandalism, to the extent that from a security point of view it’s a bit of a challenge for us.”

The power station was built beside the sea in 1946 and shut down in 1985.

It is on the interim state heritage list and in recent years has been touted as future luxury, or even public, housing.

The art deco building is the jewel in the crown of the WA Planning Commission plan to transform the scrappy stretch of former industrial land between South Fremantle and Port Coogee.

However, Mr Noakes claimed consultation with Verve had been minimal.

He suggested that if the planning commission wanted the building to remain in state ownership it should buy it at a price acceptable to Verve – which he said was not an agent of the state but a profit centre.

“We believe that the zoning of the site needs to allow sufficient scope for actual development of the entire site in order to fund the refurbishment of the power station building, and the development needs to take place in a commercial environment unless of course the state intends to fully fund the restoration and development of the site,” he said.

Chair of the hearing committee, Elizabeth Taylor, described the building as “a nightmare”.

Mr Noakes said the site was already compromised by an adjacent electricity substation which he understood would cost $80 million to move. A submission by Western Power, also released today, put that figure at more than $150 million.

Last year, the National Trust named the defunct South Fremantle and East Perth power stations in its national ‘Top 10′ of historic buildings most at risk.

The Trust claimed that Verve inaction at South Fremantle amounted to “demolition by neglect”.