{"id":330702,"date":"2025-12-06T03:15:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-06T03:15:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/330702\/"},"modified":"2025-12-06T03:15:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-06T03:15:09","slug":"adelaide-residents-in-the-dark-over-gilbert-street-development-proposal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/330702\/","title":{"rendered":"Adelaide residents ‘in the dark’ over Gilbert Street development proposal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Residents in Adelaide’s CBD say planning laws have left them “in the dark” over a proposal to build a five-storey building, complete with a car stacker, that will overlook a childcare centre and an eco-living community.<\/p>\n

They were first notified about the development proposal for 108 Gilbert Street in early 2024 through a leaflet drop from Adelaide City Council.<\/p>\n

The Council Assessment Panel then received about 10 objections, and three people brought their concerns to its April 2024 meeting before the proposal was rejected.<\/p>\n

The plan to boost Adelaide’s CBD to 50,000 residents<\/a><\/p>\n

The Lord Mayor wants to nearly double the population of the CBD and North Adelaide by 2036.<\/p>\n

About 12 months later, residents “informally” found out that an appeal had been made via the Environment, Resources and Development Court (ERDC).<\/p>\n

A compulsory conference had been held behind closed doors, and planning permission for a compromised proposal later granted by the CAP.<\/p>\n

“While the appellant, the developer, was allowed to submit a new proposal, the interested public were not informed of the court proceedings or directly informed of the judicial outcome,” said Gilbert Street resident Peter Brady.<\/p>\n

“It makes a mockery of the democratic court process.”<\/p>\n

\"Modern<\/p>\n

Three storey-townhouses exist on the other side of Considine Place. (ABC Radio Adelaide: Malcolm Sutton)<\/p>\n

The ERDC Act states that proceedings before the court must be heard in public.<\/p>\n

But it also states that the court, where it considers reasons to be “sufficient”, can give directions to exclude any person from a hearing, or require that that it be held in private, or prohibit or restrict the publication of evidence \u2014 or contents of any document \u2014 given to the court.<\/p>\n

“Unless I am missing something, the whole system is at odds with itself. It appears to be a closed court while insisting in its documentation that it is truly open,” Mr Brady said.<\/p>\n

Deputy Lord Mayor Keiran Snape, who spoke to the ABC in his capacity as an independent candidate for Adelaide for next year’s state election, is a former member of the CAP.<\/p>\n

“Often the developers are unsuccessful that first time around, effectively told the reason why, and then they can go back and tweak those particular reasons and re-lodge \u2014 often without having to disclose to residents,” he said.<\/p>\n

“[This] is a difficult example of what happens.”<\/p>\n

A City of Adelaide spokesperson said it had expressed concern regarding “a reduction in third party appeal rights” following the state government’s planning reforms in 2021<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“Council provided this feedback as part of its submission into the Planning System Implementation Review in January 2023,” he said.<\/p>\n

Abutting Christie Walk<\/p>\n

The original proposal involved demolishing an existing building at the site, and building a six-level mixed-use building with an office at ground level and apartments above.<\/p>\n

The CAP decided it constituted “excessive height”, “overdevelopment with minimum site areas not satisfied”, and there was a lack of adequate setbacks from the northern boundary abutting the Christie Walk eco-community.<\/p>\n

Resident Geoff Schrader lives inside one of 27 dwellings at the village, which is used to demonstrate ecologically sustainable living in a city location, both through the buildings’ construction and ongoing life span.<\/p>\n

\"Man<\/p>\n

Geoff Schrader says the biggest issue with the development is associated car parking. (Supplied: Geoff Schrader)<\/p>\n

He said the biggest problem with the proposal was car parking and how it would work when the building’s access point will be Considine Place \u2014 a narrow laneway off Gilbert Street.<\/p>\n

“It’s how people get out of Christie Walk, and if there’s a queue of cars trying to get into their car parks at the end of the day, or beginning of the day, that will be problematic,” Mr Schrader said.<\/p>\n

He said the lane also supported foot traffic from people heading to and from homeless shelters in and around Whitmore Square.<\/p>\n

“The other issues are the fact it’s kind of higher than the current height allowance for this portion of Gilbert Street, and it overlooks a childcare centre, so there are issues around child safety and so forth.”\"Adjacent<\/p>\n

The five-storey mixed-used building, if approved, will abut this childcare centre. (ABC Radio Adelaide: Malcolm Sutton)<\/p>\n

The compromised proposal was presented to CAP at its January 29 2025 meeting, where it decided to grant planning consent.<\/p>\n

The building height had been reduced to five levels, car parking spaces reduced from 28 to 19, and the set-back between the first and fourth levels and the northern boundary increased from 1 metre to more than 5m.<\/p>\n

At ground level, however, from where the car stacker is believed to be located, it will be only a metre from Christie Walk buildings.<\/p>\n

System ‘allows for transparency’<\/p>\n

A state government spokesperson said it was a matter for Adelaide City Council to communicate with “their residents about the decision they came to with the developer in the ERDC”.<\/p>\n

“The system allows for transparency, with publicly available documents uploaded to Plan SA at all times throughout the process per the legislative and policy frameworks,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Details of matters to be heard in the ERDC are publicly available through the case lists published daily on the Courts Administration Authority website.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The Christie Walk ecocity development was finished in December 2006. (ABC Radio Adelaide: Malcolm Sutton)<\/p>\n

Mr Brady warned that a system that excluded third parties from appeal processes could be taken advantage of by developers.<\/p>\n

“They know that the legislation is there, and indeed, everything that’s been done so far here is due process and legal, but so what?” he said.<\/p>\n

“I could be sitting here on my balcony and at the end of next year all of a sudden Whelan the Wrecker rolls in with a big ball, knocks the building down, and we’re going, ‘What?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Residents in Adelaide’s CBD say planning laws have left them “in the dark” over a proposal to build…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":330703,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[184978,34599,64,63,99,184980,16553,184981,184979],"class_list":["post-330702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-109-gilbert-street","tag-adelaide-city-council","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-christie-walk","tag-development","tag-erdc","tag-peter-brady"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330702\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/330703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}