Adelaide’s first skyscraper will be a “phallic” construction overshadowing the birthplace of women’s suffrage, critics say.
The Walker Corporation has begun work on a 38-storey commercial building next to Parliament House on North Terrace, which is known as the city’s cultural boulevard.
The planned building will be 160m high – the threshold for a skyscraper is 150m. Adelaide’s tallest building is 138m, although there are also plans under way for a 183m building.
Walker Tower 2 will span almost 50,000 square metres, accommodate up to 5,000 office workers and 100 retail workers, and will include a rooftop bar and restaurant. The Walker Corporation has already built a tower in the Festival Plaza precinct.
But Adelaide resident Robert Farnan, who has convened a working party composed of planners, architects, lawyers, residents’ groups, the Greens and others to raise awareness of the issues and lobby state and federal governments to intervene, said it was a “hugely questionable” development and a “state-supported skyscraper on public land”.
“The word is spreading about the significance of the site [as] the place where full democracy first occurred,” he said.
In 1894, the parliament passed world-first laws allowing women to both vote and stand for election. Aboriginal women were also enfranchised – although they faced multiple barriers.
Both old and new parliament houses are on the national heritage list because of “a series of radical reforms to political laws and processes that Australians now take for granted”.
“It was here that the democratic ideals of all men and women having the right to vote, secret ballots, and one person/one vote were first introduced,” its listing reads.
Stewart Sweeney, a retired academic and public policy advocate who worked with SA’s famously reformist premier Don Dunstan, described the proposal as a “phallic logo-ridden tower of exclusion”.
“It’s the wrong building in the wrong place,” he said. “It’s next to the parliament, but that’s not just any old parliament, it’s a special parliament in a global sense.
“It’s the parliament where the breakthrough on women’s suffrage, for the right to vote and to stand for parliament was first legislated, and it’s hard to think of a place where erecting a tower whose main claim to fame is the highest tower in Adelaide is the right place to do that.”
Loine Sweeney, wife of Stewart and former executive officer of the Women’s Suffrage Centenary, said the tower would be a “profound mistake” that would not just overshadow a building but a legacy.
Adelaide City Council is opposed to the development because of its impact on Parliament House and because the site is part of the Adelaide Parklands. The Adelaide Park Lands Association called it a “monster”, a private high-rise development that undermined what the parklands represent – being “free, green, and public”.
Historian Samuel Doering said on social media that the space was “hallowed” and agreed it should be used for “suffrage storytelling”. The outgoing History Trust of SA chief executive officer, Greg Mackie, responded to Doering, saying it was a “shameful grab of priceless public Adelaide park land for private profit that destroys the deserved sense of place of SA’s parliament and our proud democracy”.
Work has already started on the site, although the current design does not yet have formal approval from the State Commission Assessment Panel (SCAP). The planning minister, Nick Champion, said it would be up to the SCAP to assess the development application.
“It’s important the SCAP remains an independent authority to assess and determine major development proposals in South Australia and not be influenced by politics,” he said.
Announcing its design, the state government said it would be set back a minimum of nine metres from Parliament House to “preserve its visual integrity, heritage value and to preserve view lines to Parliament House”.
The premier, Peter Malinauskas, has said the development showed the “state’s economy is growing, and our city is growing up”, and would bring in $1bn a year in economic activity.
“This will be an iconic building that will define Adelaide’s skyline,” he said when the building designs were revealed.
Guardian Australia has approached Walker Corporation for comment.
