Steven Marshall Adaptive reuse and opening up Adelaide

Steven Marshall: Adaptive reuse and opening up AdelaideFor a long time, Adelaide has had a reputation as a sleepy city; difficult to run businesses from, and hard to find jobs in. While in Sydney and Melbourne businesses fight for office space and rents are astronomical, in Adelaide much of our building stock remains vacant from the ground level up.The most obvious example of this is our current premiere boulevard North Terrace; lined on one side by ivy-clad universities and cultural institutions, and on the other by historic building shells that have been unable to be utilised thanks to rigid Building Codes and government red-tape.This is hardly an encouraging sight for start-up businesses or big multi-nationals. I believe we must change this. I want to see an Adelaide CBD that challenges this stereotype. I want Adelaide to be a hot-bed of innovation; full of public spaces, successfully integrated residential areas and thriving businesses. We must utilise every nook of our historical city-centre. As you would be well aware, D-Grade building stock currently has a vacancy rate of almost 21 per cent and C-Grade building stock has a vacancy rate of almost 18 per cent.If we want to activate our CBD, grow business, increase city safety and grow tourist numbers we need to put our best face forward- we need a city where businesses and developers are able to re-purpose our heritage and create new and exciting projects for our city buildings.This is why I have pushed for legislative changes that will give the Minister for Planning the ability to override the Building Code of Australia’s restrictions on the adaptive reuse of buildings built before 1980 through a Ministerial Specification. We have introduced our amendments to the Planning Bill as a matter of urgency- we need to get our city economy moving again. The current Building Code provisions are a barrier to redeveloping older buildings; they are designed for new building structures which makes them unnecessary and ill-fitting for the adaptive re-use and upgrading of heritage properties. Our changes would breathe life into vacant buildings and increase property values, by making it easier for old building stock to be utilised for new purposes. When I speak to property owners about the building stock in the CBD, I hear again and again that red-tape makes the redevelopment of our older buildings unviable. I would like to seek feedback from you, the experts in the industry, on the shape you believe a Ministerial Specification should take. What are the greatest barriers you have encountered, and what should the Minister be able to override from the Building Code? We need Adelaide as South Australia’s capital city to be a hotbed of productive development. I want to see a CBD that is fully utilised. The economy of Adelaide does not end at the ground level; we need a skyline full of bustling offices, rather than abandoned top-floors and For-Lease signs.