by Shane Sody
Premier Peter Malinauskas declared on 5 January that this eight-storey car park, on Port Road, (pictured at the top of this page) was 75% complete:
"three quarters of the huge car park structure is now complete with construction underway on level seven of the eight-storey carpark.
"The carpark will have 1300 spaces – an almost 40 per cent increase on the existing [Women’s & Children's] hospital’s 940 carpark spaces, providing more convenience for families and staff," the Premier said.
In case you have forgotten, this is what the car park site looked like before construction began. It had been called "Kate Cocks Park" i.e. part of Park 27 of your Park Lands.
If you consider your world-unique, National Heritage listed Park Lands to be Adelaide's "paradise" then the State Government has literally echoed the words of the song 'Big Yellow Taxi' and literally "paved paradise and put up a parking lot."
But of course the habit of replacing 'Open Green Public’ Park Lands with more and more paved car parking areas is not new. The current State Government is continuing past practice of previous Governments and City Council over many years, as our 2022 video made clear:
If you are wondering whether car parking might be an appropriate usage of your Open Green Public Park Lands, then please read our ‘Myth Buster’ article:
Tree losses
On 5 January the Premier invited media to have "a first glimpse of what the new Women’s and Children’s Hospital will look like inside, as construction nears completion on the hospital’s eight-storey carpark."
Journalists were given access to computer-generated imagery of what the finished hospital is intended to look like, both inside and out.
Then, on Sunday 11 January, the Premier announced that the opening date for the new Aquatic Centre, in your Park Lands would be brought forward by one day, so that lucky draw prize winners could visit the new centre on its new opening day, 26 January: https://www.adelaide-aquatic-ballot.sa.gov.au/
In neither case did the Premier refer to the hundreds of mature trees that have been felled for either of these new developments.
His Government has on these and other occasions over the past four years chosen locations on your Park Lands for new developments, rejecting calls by APA and others to choose building sites on alternative brownfield locations.
