ApartmentsChris ThomsonWed 04 Nov 26
Tower Play for Art Deco SA Cinema Aired Alongside $500m Homes Fund
A program offering $500 million of pre-sale guarantees for off-the-plan apartment projects has been launched by the South Australian government as a 16-storey addition to an art deco cinema in North Adelaide is unveiled.
The fast-track fund that focuses on Port Road in Adelaide’s inner west, the Adelaide CBD and North Adelaide is now open for applications.
SA Premier Peter Malinauskas co-ordinated the announcement with that of Wallis Entertainments’ plans to restore its art deco The Piccadilly cinema at North Adelaide and build a 16-storey apartment tower beside it.
Malinauskas said Adelaide was building up and out to give people more housing choice.
“If that’s in a bigger family home, we need to grow out,” he said.
“If that’s in the heart of the city, we need to grow up.
“The fund will help get stalled developments moving and shovels in the ground sooner, helping to increase housing supply across Adelaide.”
The premier said development of North Adelaide’s main drag, O’Connell Street, was essential to giving the City of Adelaide—which contains the leafy suburb and the metropolis’s CBD—more life.
“Eighty Eight O’Connell has transformed the street, and The Piccadilly redevelopment has the potential to do the same,” he said.
The state heritage-listed cinema is at the corner of O’Connell and Childers streets. Plans have yet to be filed for the planned revamp of the 1940-built landmark and adjacent tower.
Beyond the CBD and North Adelaide, the apartment fast-track fund’s third priority area takes in Port Road and James Congdon Drive, from the inner-western suburbs of Thebarton and Southwark to Hindmarsh.
Developers of sites on other strategic corridors and locations leading into the CBD can also apply for the fund. To be eligible, projects must be apartment developments of at least 20 homes that have been approved and are able to commence within six months.
Separately to the fund, for parts of Hindmarsh, planning changes that would uplift permissable building heights from two or three storeys to 20 storeys have been released for public comment.
The proposed changes are part of what the state is calling the inner west code amendment.
