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Council tries to give away money but no-one wants it

The Adelaide City Council has been offering hundreds of thousands of dollars to city landowners to beautify their buildings – but not a single person has taken the cash since the scheme began four years ago.

Jul 06, 2016, updated Jul 06, 2016
Counter-accusations are flying about corporate greed and over-reliance on council rates.

Counter-accusations are flying about corporate greed and over-reliance on council rates.

The council last night instructed its administration to review the $250,000 Mainstreet Improvement Scheme. The budget has been left unspent since 2011.

The scheme originally offered to pay half the cost of restoring the historic façades of commercial buildings – particularly for Rundle Mall, Rundle Street, Hindley Street and Gouger Street – but to no avail.

The offer was boosted to 75 per cent of restoration costs in 2014 to “promote interest” – but still, nothing.

Council staff last night presented a workshop on the luckless scheme, which had been “extensively promoted [from] 2011-15 with no tangible result”.

It has so far cost ratepayers $13,000, plus staff time.

Councillors instructed staff to “revise” the scheme, but not scrap it.

The two applications for funding that had been accepted by the council during the four-year life of the scheme were withdrawn by the landowners who had applied for them. According to council staff, this was because of the “timeliness” of the process, poor “financial viability” for the owner and the requirement to sign a land management agreement.

Area councillor Sandy Wilkinson, who originally proposed the scheme, told InDaily the scheme was meant “to provide generous financial assistance for property owners to restore their main-street buildings”.

In particular, he said, it was designed to promote the restoration of historic buildings “brutalised in the 1960s and ’70s” when they were renovated to look like modern buildings.

But the “sticking point”, he said, was the requirement for a land management agreement, which would have prevented owners from demolishing their buildings, and committed them to endorsing a heritage listing if an application was made.

“The standard position [of commercial building owners] … is one of wanting as few or little controls on the property [as possible],” he said.

Asked why there had been no take-up of the scheme, a council spokesperson told InDaily: “The guidelines around the scheme were quite targeted and required that the building owner agree to a land management agreement which would bind the current and future owners to preserve the heritage façade of the building.”

“The next step is for administration to prepare a report for council outlining the way forward with a continued focus on preservation and reinstatement of historic facades while refocusing the program in a broader economic context.”

Wilkinson, an architect and planner with a specialisation in heritage, said he believed the scheme would be more effective if it provided a loan, rather than a grant, which would have to be paid back only if the relevant building was demolished.

However, council staff said that idea was “not feasible” because the council was not a registered financial institution.

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