EXCLUSIVE: An ambitious masterplan for Heirisson Island championed by City of Perth mayor Lisa Scaffidi has fallen over, and a footbridge to the island is likely to be deferred.
Papers to be considered by the city council on Tuesday night reveal the plan and bridge - first hyped by Ms Scaffidi in 2008 – are too hot for her council to handle.
After a funding plea to the Federal Government fell on deaf ears, the city has failed to garner the $5 million in non-council cash it says it needs to get the pedestrian bridge built.
Now, city planners are recommending the walkway be delayed another six months in the hope the state government will chime in with some spondoolies.
The planners also recommend that $10.3 million of works slated for the island be scaled right back.
More middling plans would see works at the southern end of the island only, as opposed to the original north and south overhaul in the pictured plan.
A Department of Indigenous Affairs clearance for the bridge will lapse and need to be reapplied for if a new design is decided upon.
Ms Scaffidi has resigned from the board of a sculpture park planned for Heirisson and the council planners have recommended that the city fish around for a more junior replacement.
One ray of hope, say the planners, is that after recent lobbying by the sculpture park committee, the government has indicated support for a Heirisson revamp.
The planners say the government would be willing to consider a $5 million handout to improve the island’s landscape and infrastructure, and between $2 million and $3 million for the bridge.
This would leave the bridge at least $2 million underfunded.
In contrast, the Utopian collection of Caucasians the architects have positioned around the kiosk looks like a throwback to the White Australia Policy.
The existing Forrest Place information kiosk is slated for demolition from the middle of this month.
Volunteer protocol droids who occupy that outmoded structure will be temporarily housed elsewhere.
If approved by Perth city councillors on Tuesday night, the new kiosk will aim for liftoff by the end of October.
Edith Cowan University, already WA’s capital of funky architecture, is again set to rock the block with a stunning new student services hub.
The $54 million, five-storey hub is planned for the west of ECU’s Joondalup campus near the university library.
The project will include meeting rooms that appear to be suspended in mid air, an outdoor forum with theatre and screen, and an open marketplace where wares will be traded at set times.
ECU believes the building will usher in “a new generation of university life”.
Plans crammed with beautiful young people make the campus appear more like a Nevada desert resort than a dowdy place of higher learning.
A recommendation for the hub’s approval will be debated by a state government planning committee on Friday afternoon.
DECEMBER 14 UPDATE: The City of Stirling last night unanimously approved the Rendezvous revamp.
The abandoned redevelopment of Scarborough’s jaded Rendezvous Observation City complex is back on track, with city planners belatedly urging that fresh plans be approved.
The hotel’s Singapore-based owner, The Straits Trading Company, has proposed two eight-storey apartment blocks to the north and south of the 333-room, 17-storey hotel.
The northern building takes in the site of the defunct Lookout nightclub and has 60 apartments. The southern building, on the corner of Scarborough Beach Road and The Esplanade, has 84 apartments.
New shops, restaurants, cafes and small bars are planned for the ground level.
The existing hotel would also be refurbished to include a new grand entrance linking The Esplanade and West Coast Highway. New ballroom, restaurant, bar and conference facilities are also on the drawing board.
Project builder Mirvac has proposed an extra 219 car parking bays be added to the current 300.
In May 2009, this reporter revealed Straits had abandoned plans to convert the hotel’s 333 rooms into 102 luxury apartments.
The company waved the white flag in its battle with the City of Stirling in the State Administrative Tribunal after the council and the State Government opposed the plans and the Global Financial Crisis made the project unviable.
At the time, the government’s tourism promotion arm, Tourism WA, objected that the converted building was to have only 142 hotel rooms, 191 less than the current number.
This time ’round, Tourism WA declined to lodge a submission during the plans’ public comment phase.
Of 56 public submissions on the new plans, 53 supported the revamp, one opposed it and another was non-commital.
OCTOBER 12 UPDATE: PERTH CITY COUNCILLORS LAST NIGHT APPROVED MIRVAC’S MONOLITH EIGHT COUNCILLORS TO ONE. REAL ESTATE AGENT-CUM-COUNCILLOR LYNDON RODGERS WAS THE ONLY ELECTED OFFICIAL TO VOTE AGAINST THE PLANS.
Plans for a 35-storey rectangular tower jutting up from the site of the historic old Treasury buildings have finally hit City of Perth desks and been recommended for approval by the council’s planners.
The planners have endorsed the blueprints, by national property developer Mirvac, ahead of the next council meeting on October 11.
Last year, the state government agreed to a 99-year lease at terms above market rates for $102 million of office space over 25 years in the structure.
Plans for the office block also include renovating the defunct Treasury Buildings – which are on the register of the national estate – into a 48-room hotel.
The hotel and various commercial tenancies would occupy the first, second and third levels of the existing heritage buildings. A fourth floor commercial tenancy is proposed parallel to St Georges Terrace.
Mirvac also wants to erect a five-storey building fronting Hay Street between the existing Land Titles building and Perth Town Hall. The structure would accommodate retail on the ground floor, two office levels and a gym and swimming pool for the hotel.
A park – at this stage dubbed ‘Foundation Place’ – would surround the office tower. The park would encompass the shady slither of green beside Perth Town Hall where in 1829 Perth was officially founded by the felling of a tree.
The now-vacant Treasury Buildings were built from 1875, and their redevelopment has been dogged by controversy.
Those plans were scrapped in 2007 after vehement opposition from the city whose design and planning committees had initially supported the proposal. At the city council meeting that recommended the state government refuse the building, then-councillor Max Kay – a former comedian – dubbed the structure a ‘colostomy bag’.
Mr Kay is now president of the National Trust of Australia (WA).
After a 22-year delay to the planned Port Rockingham marina, 87 per cent of 483 public submissions say the transformative project should go ahead.
Rockingham council planners have recommended their political masters endorse the 500 boatpen, 652 parking bay, project before it goes to the WA Planning Commission for a final decision.
Of 483 valid comments received on the plans, a resounding 420 (or 87 per cent) have supported Port Rockingham.
A marina was first approved for the area 22 years ago – in 1989. That approval lapsed, along with a subsequent approval in 1991.
If the latest, pictured, plans are approved, the project will see a pier extend from the end of the Wanliss Street carpark about 200 metres into Cockburn Sound.
Northeast from the end of the pier a 770-metre breakwater would dogleg out and run parallel to the shoreline.
The marina would have 4000 sqm of commercial floorspace and take two years to build.
A submission by Yvette Symons of Wellard says the Rockingham foreshore has been neglected for too long.
“I believe the marina will breathe new life into the area and provide much needed facilities,” Ms Symons writes.
“It will provide employment opportunities and hopefully help boost the tourism industry.”
In a cliche-laden submission, Lia Runbridge of Waikiki says: “Bring it on, move forward, and don’t keep us in the dark”.
Among the 13 per cent minority objecting to the marina is David Bennett of Rockingham Beach Road.
“Rockingham Beach is the main swimming beach for the whole area,” Mr Bennett writes.
“To have 500 boats polluting the waters will make it very unattractive as a swimming beach.
A big, brown Hay Street office block considered by many to be Perth’s ugliest building is set to be demolished – but a similarly brown structure is being primed to rise up beside it.
The Law Chambers Building two doors down from Town Hall, and behind the Anglican cathedral, has blighted Hay Street for decades.
City of Perth planners have recommended that a demolition bid by owners, the Anglican Diocese of Perth, be approved.
The church’s plans include refurbishing and raising by one floor the adjacent, 13-storey, Public Trustees Building which is also big and brown.
What will replace the Law Chambers Building has not yet been revealed (it will be big), but the current rendering of the refurbished Public Trustees Building (below, right) shows a largely brown facade.
Before …
… and after.
A report by the city’s planners says the new structures will “significantly improve” the area.
The plans will be debated by the city planning committee on Tuesday night, and the report notes the colours are subject to negotiation.
In March last year, this reporter revealed that previous $81 million plans for the area by national developer Mirvac had bitten the dust.
At the time, Ken Adam – who chairs local design think tank City Vision – said the Law Chambers Building had cursed the CBD for too long.
“Eyesore is the most commonly used word to describe it,” he said.
“It’s a pathetic setting which sees the cathedral cast in shadow for most of the summer.”
The City of Vincent last night approved a seven-storey, neo-Brutalist hotel for trendy Beaufort Street.
In November last year, oneperth.com.au revealed that South Perth-based Rothchester Pty Ltd was planning ‘The Beaufort’ (pictured) for the site of the existing Billabong Backpackers on the corner of Lincoln Street in Highgate.
In December, The Beaufort was knocked back by City of Vincent councillors who deemed it “excessive”, against a recommendation of approval from the professional planners.
The plans were two-storeys shorter than a hotel Rothchester had earlier proposed for the site in November, 2009.
After two mediation sessions with the city in the State Administrative Tribunal, Rothchester has re-lodged slightly scaled-down plans.
Approved after a tortuous council debate last night, the four-star hotel will have 138 rooms and an indoor-outdoor restaurant and bar.
In the face of Perth’s hotel bed shortage, the tourism and development industries have complained hard lately about how difficult it is to get an inn approved.
High rise towers planned for the southern end of the state government’s Perth waterfront project are too high according to a City of Perth planner.
In a 20-page report to the city’s councillors, planner Samantha Ferguson says the buildings are too bulky for beside the Swan River.
The government has proposed nine buildings with indicative heights between 20 and 37 storeys for the river foreshore to the west of Barrack Square. Also envisaged is a four-storey hotel.
The pictured blueprints are the latest in a long series that have been scrunched up and used as political footballs by successive governments and incarnations of Perth City Council.
In the latest instance, Ms Ferguson says indicative building heights at the south of the site should be reduced to maintain human scale near the river and reflect the prominence of St Georges Terrace.
The Terrace’s, and WA’s, tallest building Central Park soars to 51 storeys – 14 storeys higher than any envisaged for the waterfront.
Ms Ferguson says the buildings’ bulk should be reviewed to minimise overshadowing and wind effects, and preserve views to Kings Park, the river and bell tower.
The buildings referred to by Ms Ferguson range in height from 20 to 25 storeys.
Her report slams the government’s mooted relocation of the state heritage listed Florence Hummerston building. That single-storey structure has graced the northeast corner of The Esplanade since 1928 and currently houses the upmarket Grand Palace Chinese restaurant.
A contentious block of flats planned for beside the Jacob’s Ladder stairway has been refused partly because the developer misled Perth City Council.
In a written decision delivered today, State Administrative Tribunal senior member David Parry upheld the city’s earlier refusal of Swanhill Enterprises’ futuristic design.
Swanhill is partly owned by the Di Latte family of the Belmont-based, Australian Stock Exchange-listed, Diploma Construction.
On the eve of Christianity’s holiest day, Mr Parry – who wears a Jewish kippah during hearings – framed his ruling amid a lesson on the Old Testament.
“The Book of Genesis records that the patriarch Jacob, fleeing his brother Esau’s fratricidal intent … departed from Beer-sheba and went toward Haran,” Mr Parry commenced.
“He encountered the place and spent the night there because the sun had set; he took from the stones of the place which he arranged around his head, and lay down in that place.
“And he dreamt, and behold!
“A ladder was set earthward and its top reached heavenward; and behold! angels of God were ascending and descending on it.”
Mr Parry added that at Mt Eliza in Perth – “some distance [ie 11,000 kilometres] to the southeast of Mount Moriah in Jerusalem which is the place where Jacob dreamt of a ladder connecting earth and heaven – there is a set of 242 concrete steps and landings named after Jacob’s comforting vision and known as ‘Jacob’s Ladder’”.
He concluded that original photo montages lodged by Swanhill were misleading in terms of the tower’s height and visual impact.
Mr Parry nominated this as one reason for his refusal.
“While the evidence before the tribunal does not indicate whether angels ascend and descend Jacob’s Ladder, it does establish that Jacob’s Ladder is … an important and unique public place within the City of Perth,” he noted.
The city initially refused the plans after receiving 26 objections from nearby property owners.
Some had complained the connection between the building and Jacob’s Ladder would compromise the ladder with the building’s base obscuring entry to it.
