Opportunities lost: nearly 20 years ago, an amazingly prescient report identified the way to create a new Adelaide – from super-fast broadband, to a new Adelaide Oval, to retaining our best and brightest.

In 1996 noted engineer and industrialist, the late Don Williams penned a “Letter from Adelaide” – dated 2010.

Williams’s “Back to the Future” letter forms the opening two pages of the Adelaide 21 project report, delivered to all tiers of government in 1996.

It imagines that the recommended strategies have been carried out – and how Adelaide can congratulate itself on the achievements it produced.

The 52-page report can be found these days in the preserved pamphlets section of the State Reference Library, and it’s a remarkable document.

Williams and his steering committee’s recommendations led directly to just one project – the North Terrace redevelopment.

If the full set of recommendations had been embraced, Adelaide would be just as he had imagined: “clean, safe and accessible, this vibrant, open and forward-looking City is a centre of innovation. She is at the forefront of information and communications technology, linking to existing and emerging global markets and hence a successful player in the world economy.”

Williams, a long-time CEO of the Australian Submarine Corporation who died in 2001, described the Adelaide he imagined as a city of learning and a major player in the education industry, having coordinated the major tertiary institutions.

In his vision of the future, “Adelaide billed herself with confidence as the City of Creative Imagination.”

But the warning that Williams gives in the opening to his letter sounds all too familiar.

“In 1996 the people of Adelaide faced a crucial choice: the comfort of quiet regionalism and relative decline with increasing numbers of their young seeking and making opportunities elsewhere or alternatively, the challenge of becoming a cosmopolitan, internationally oriented and competitive city.”

Where he allows himself to imagine that Adelaide took up the challenge, he notes that success would be founded on one key element: “Above all else, that the mindset, culture and attitudes of the City had to change. A belief in themselves and in the future replacing introspection and complacency.”

One legacy of the Adelaide 21 project is the Capital City Committee, formed in 1998 as a partnership between State Government and the Adelaide City Council.

Williams said at the time of his report that there could be no progress unless there was an over-arching City Centre Marketing Authority.

The concept of one city, one voice, remains unfulfilled.

The specific recommendations of the Adelaide 21 Project are worth revisiting. Some were eventually taken up, others remain in the too hard basket.

1. An underground cabled CBD broadband network to drive commerce and education.

This concept came at a time when hardly anyone had heard of broadband. It would be more than a decade before the concept of a National Broadband Network would be proposed as a revolutionary idea. In 1996 the ABC newsroom where I worked had one desk top computer with dial-up internet access – even that was seen as edgy. Had Adelaide gone down the path of a CBD broadband network it would have been way ahead of any city in the world.

2. Redevelop Adelaide Oval for major sporting events.

At the time this was deemed impossible due to the pre-eminent position of Football Park at West Lakes. It would take until 2008 for the notion of the city as a sporting hub to be revived.

3. Enhance Torrens Lake and connect the River to North Terrace.

Now known as the Riverbank precinct, this notion also sat idle until 2008 and was only formally taken up by governments in 2010.

4. Develop Leigh Street as an example of mixed use urban design.

Leigh Street was gracious but ignored by government until 2013 and it’s now lauded as part of the State Government and Adelaide City Council’s successful push for vibrancy in some of the city’s forgotten locations.

5. Convert the Treasury Building in Victoria Square to hotel use.

This one actually happened a few years later (2002) and the suggestion may have been the catalyst for it.

6. Central Market to be the focus of the city’s food and wine identity; it should be open seven days a week.

Little has changed since 1996 – there have been some improvements (and some management troubles), but it remains a niche place, not a focal point. And it’s not open seven days a week.

7. Upgrade the Park Lands

A strategic review of the funding, maintenance, management and planning of Adelaide’s Park Lands; develop Victoria Park racecourse to include an equestrian centre and upgrade North Adelaide Golf Courses.

Victoria Park is now a building site for six months of the year and a place to walk the dog in winter and spring.

8. Develop storm water retention and re-use lakes in the South Park Lands.

Another example of where the project report was years ahead of its time and what might have been had we taken up the proposal.

9. “Enhance Light Square” and “plant more trees” around the perimeter of Victoria Square.

We’ll never know if Don Williams would have been a fan of the Vic Square redevelopment – he would have at least applauded the effort.

10.Upgrade Adelaide Airport, City Bus Terminal and Keswick Interstate Rail Terminal as the places the give visitors their first impression.

Two out of three on that one, although Keswick has been given a minor spruce-up.

Some of the commentary on Adelaide 21 reinforces the one underlying frustration that remains t9oday.

Adelaide City Council planner Doug Hayes, who was seconded to the project, later wrote in an academic journal: “From the early stages of consultation a clear priority emerged to ensure that the organisational structures and governance arrangements would enable the Strategy to be effectively implemented.

“Widespread frustration was evident that all too often good projects failed to proceed past the planning stages in Adelaide due to lack of organisation capacity and funding.”

One person who worked with Don Williams on Adelaide 21 for most of the committee’s time, former Labor Senator Chris Schacht, told InDaily Williams  was a “committed South Australian”.

“He was the driving force in the committee, having come up with the idea himself to get a broad group together to come up with one single strategy to develop our strengths,” Schacht said.

“It doesn’t surprise me that his final report would still have been so relevant today.

“A very bright man, he understood that governments could make an investment of time, effort and sometimes money to kick start the entrepreneurship in the community.

“He was an early supporter of the Alice to Darwin railway.”

If Williams was still with us today, I suspect that he might see the success of Adelaide Oval as the catalyst to a unified desire to be even more adventurous.

His concise 52 page report shows he and his team had the right idea – we’ve just been a bit slow on the uptake.

Perhaps the parliamentary library could dust it off, copy it and distribute it to all MPs, Adelaide City Councillors and key business leaders.

Dr Donald Williams AO HonFIEAust CPEng FTSE
(1937-2001)

Don Williams was employed by the Western Australian Government Railways as a student and graduate Civil Engineer.
In 1971 Williams took up a senior management role on the West Gate Bridge construction project in Melbourne following its collapse, where he gained great credit for his work in reconstruction.
He then returned to railways as Assistant General Manager Engineering and Planning of the Australian National Railways Commission, located in Adelaide and, in 1979, became the Chief Executive.
While remaining Chairman of Australian National Railways, in 1987 Williams accepted the role of Chief Executive Officer of the newly formed Australian Submarine Corporation charged with executing the $3.9billion contract to build six new submarines for the Royal Australian Navy.
This challenging role leading the then most expensive contract for Australian Defence equipment meant balancing the cultural differences among the Swedish, American and Australian shareholders; dealing with multi-cultural staff; and with the political ramifications, at both the State and federal levels, of the project.
The core of Don Williams’ efforts was to create an Australian business enterprise of strategic magnitude and to foster the raising of standards and the active participation of Australian industry in the submarine project.
Don Williams’ contribution during this period to the quality standards of South Australian industry are noted by his insistence on quality accreditation of suppliers to ASC.
This lead to a large increase in quality accredited companies, which is an enduring legacy to this day.

Source: Engineers Australia Hall of Fame citation