Page 4596 - Week 16 - Tuesday, 27 November 1990
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We are delighted to have had the Chief Minister assure us that those are not under threat at this stage, independent of the development. The letter continued:
Apart from what is left of Glebe Park, this is the only remaining green area in Civic.
That letter was written by Ann Collaery, at that stage the co-convenor of the Boulevard Lawns Committee. That is one of the early cases. There has been a great deal of controversy over section 52. The Associate Commissioner of the NCDC, Miss Jill Lang, in an article on 19 December 1987 in the Canberra Times, pointed out that an ambiguity in the development conditions for the site was corrected before the auction.
Yet we are told by the Chief Minister that there is still a legal wrangle going on over this particular section. We are also aware that in February a question from Dr Kinloch to the Chief Minister resulted in an answer from the Chief Minister saying that 8,000 square metres of office and retail space were going to be made available on this particular block.
After a question from me on 21 November in which I suggested to the Chief Minister that it had been advertised at 9,350 square metres, an extra 1,350 square metres, I had a reply suggesting that my figure of 9,350 is correct. I will concede that it is possible that there is some confusion between the gross floor area of 9,350 and the net available floor area, which would be about 80 per cent of that and perhaps 8,000 square metres, and I hope that Mr Kaine will clarify that particular situation. But of much more concern in the reply that I received from Mr Kaine on section 52 is the way in which the development will go ahead. I quote:
The Government therefore agreed to allow a prospective purchaser to stage the development, with the possibility of constructing the hotel elements in the second stage.
That is very interesting. What has happened is that the hotel development was to go ahead and ancillary to that there was to be the office and shop development of 9,350 square metres. Now we find that the ancillary part of the development is going to go ahead. Now, 9,350 square metres, or let us take 8,000 square metres, whatever it is, is equivalent to roughly 400 extra office workers in Civic. We are talking about a large influx of office workers because we are no longer talking about a hotel development. When you allow the offices, professional suites and shops to be developed first, they can hardly be ancillary to the hotel. The whole notion of being ancillary is that they in some way support the hotel development and are, of course, an important part of that. To allow it to be developed first in this way indicates that in fact what we are getting is an office development, not a hotel development.
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