Second Festival Plaza tower receives planning approval despite heritage concerns

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a day ago

A 38-storey office building with shops, restaurants and a public plaza is set to tower over South Australia's Parliament House, after the concept was granted planning approval despite a number of concerns raised by the government's heritage agency.
The State Commission Assessment Panel (SCAP) granted planning consent to developers Walker Corporation on Wednesday to build a 160-metre-tall skyscraper in the Festival Plaza precinct, directly behind Parliament House.
The tower, scheduled for completion in 2027-28, is expected to accommodate up to 5,000 office workers and will stand alongside Walker Corporation's 29-storey "Festival One" office tower which opened in 2024.
The new 38-storey building will feature outdoor dining areas and retail tenancies on the ground-floor, an elevated plaza space on level one, commercial office space from levels six to 16 and 19 to 35, and a restaurant on level 36.
The SCAP — a panel of planning experts appointed by the State Planning Commission to assess major CBD development applications — determined the Festival Tower plan was not "seriously at variance" with the planning code, according to minutes of its meeting published on Thursday.
The panel granted the project planning consent subject to nine conditions, five of which were heritage matters concerning the relationship between the tower and Parliament House.
The Malinauskas government strongly backed Walker Corporation's proposal after asking the company to revise its earlier plan for a three-storey retail hub that would have stretched across the northern facade of Parliament House.
Planning Minister Nick Champion said the SCAP approval was "unambiguously good news for the state", adding that the Festival Plaza will be "vibrant and teeming with people" once the tower is finished.
"We want to activate this plaza and office workers will do that," Mr Champion said.
"They will provide the customers for food and beverage, they'll wander down to the theatre after work, they'll have drinks in bars in the train station and in town.
"This will bring vibrancy to the square and activity to the square, it will make this beautiful place even more vibrant and welcoming."
The second Festival Tower has not been without controversy, particularly due to its size and location on public land between the Adelaide Festival Centre and Parliament House.
A self-described coalition of 125 eminent South Australians, headlined by former Labor premier Lynn Arnold, campaigned against the tower and argued the Festival Plaza should be "open and civic in character".
The SCAP's approval also comes despite a number of concerns raised by the government's heritage agency, Heritage SA, about the impact the tower would have on Parliament House, a national heritage place.
In a submission to the SCAP, Heritage SA raised concerns that the "visual dominance" of the proposed tower would leave views of Parliament House's northern facade "compromised".
"The currently open setting to the north of Parliament House will be enclosed by the tower, compromising the historic landmark scale of Parliament House along the North Terrace boulevard," Heritage SA's principal heritage architect Michael Queale wrote.
Government planning officer Ben Scholes, who prepared a summary report for the SCAP on the development, noted Heritage SA's concerns but said the agency had "not directed refusal of the application".
"Instead, through detailed conditions to be assigned to any Planning Consent granted, Heritage SA has recommended design amendments to mitigate the concerns raised," Mr Scholes wrote.
"This position from Heritage SA, while highlighting significant impacts, indicates that these impacts may be considered manageable and would be capable of resolution through design adjustments, rather than representing a fundamental incompatibility with policy expectations."
Mr Scholes said the Walker Corporation proposal represented a "delicate balance" between the strategic vision for the precinct and heritage impacts.
He added that the proposal was "not considered to be so fundamentally inconsistent or materially detrimental to the heritage and cultural values of Parliament House" to be "seriously at variance" with the planning code's heritage policies.
"The circumstances of this application are consistent with this precedent, where a balance between strategic aspirations and heritage values was implicitly accepted."
Mr Champion said the heritage conditions imposed on the planning consent primarily relate to the building materials that "will be used to match the features of Parliament House".
"Every indication that we've had from Walker [Corporation] is that they care about complimenting the … heritage features of Parliament House," he said.
"That was one of the things that was worked on a lot by the Government Architect and the Design Review Team … a lot of thought going into that as we blend the old and the new."
The ABC has contacted Walker Corporation for comment.
The SCAP's approval marks one of the final stages of the redevelopment of the Festival Plaza precinct — a process that began in 2014 when Walker Corporation entered a partnership with the state government to redevelop the Festival Plaza car park.
That preceded a public-private partnership to upgrade the Festival Plaza's public realm, followed by construction on the 29-storey Festival One tower, which is now home to Flinders University and Deloitte.
Early works behind Parliament House are already underway to prepare for the construction of the second tower, which is planned to hold 1,354 car parking spaces and around 47,000 square metres of office space.
The second Festival Plaza building will rank among Adelaide's tallest buildings when completed.
At 160-metres in height, the tower would eclipse the city's current tallest building, Frome Central Tower One, which stands at 138-metres-tall in the east end of the CBD.
An even taller 180-metre, 37-storey hotel was given planning consent last year for construction behind the Freemasons Lodge at 254 North Terrace.