Group to fight waterfront plan

UPDATE: 4PM A powerful lobby group comprising some of Perth's leading architects, urban planners, business owners and historians has formed to rally against the Barnett Government's waterfront redevelopment plans.

Led by architect and urban designer Linley Lutton, the City Gatekeepers say they want Riverside Drive and the heritage-listed Esplanade reserve to be retained in their current forms and a "new and better Perth waterfront design".

They will march to Parliament House on February 26 and are planning a petition and website, which is due to go live today.

"Many senior professionals and members of the public have tried to talk to the people within Government about the project and warn of the problems, however, they are being dismissed out of hand," Dr Lutton said yesterday.

The group's 30 founding members include former City of Perth town planner and now Nedlands mayor Max Hipkins, University of WA history professor Jenny Gregory, architects Ralph Stanton, Ken Adam and Sasha Ivanavich and former Nationals MP Hilda Turnbull.

Dr Lutton said they feared the waterfront would become another "tragic mistake" like the Perth Convention Exhibition Centre.

"Community and professional apathy allowed this blight to occur and this same apathy could see the Perth waterfront eventuate as another irreparable blight on the city," he said.

Shadow tourism minister Michelle Roberts said the Government needed to re-think the project and cited ongoing questions about the impact of re-routing Riverside Drive and the project’s full cost.

“I think this group of people are reflecting a wider community concern,” she said.

“They need to revisit this, they need to make sure that they’ve got it right. You’ve got sensible people raising some sensible questions. Surely you don’t just plunge on ahead, particularly in the current economic environment.

“I think this project is too important and too expensive to get it wrong.”

Ms Roberts said Riverside Drive was an important route and questions remained about diverting it around the proposed river inlet.

“East-west traffic through the city might be something Colin Barnett doesn’t know much about from the western suburbs,” she said.

“But that those of us that travel routinely on Riverside Drive and in the tunnel in peak hours know that those roads are already near their maximum in the morning.”

When questioned about the current concept being a scaled-down version of Labor’s “Dubai on Swan” proposal, Ms Roberts “a lot of things have changed since then”.

“First and foremost we’ve had a global economic crisis and global economic conditions have changed dramatically from three years ago, the local economic conditions in Western Australia have changed dramatically from three years ago,” she said.

Planning Minister John Day ruled out a redesign, saying money had been committed and after 20 years of debate it was going ahead.

“I know there’s diversity views across Perth, but overwhelming I think the people of Perth and Western Australian want this project to go ahead, they’re expecting it to go ahead,” he said.

“The decision was made by the Government to go ahead and allocate the funding to ensure it could happen in February last year, so this project is actually becoming a reality.”

FuturePerth chairman and urban planner Sean Morrison said it “beggar’s belief that the City Gatekeepers believe that developing 10ha of land, in a city that covers over 5000sqkm, for high density development is unreasonable”.

“This group is a hodge-podge of people who seem intent on constructing a Hillarys Marina on the doorstep of our city,” he said.

“If we can’t have high towers in our CBD, where else can we have them?”

Mr Morrison said the project was widely supported and “should not be disrupted by the voices of a very limited group of people”.

“Fortunately the City Gatekeepers are too late and the wheels of this development are turning too fast to stop,” he said.

Major works on the $440 million waterfront project, including a river inlet cut into the Esplanade, are due to start in April.

The diversion of Riverside Drive around the inlet, a key element of the design, is expected next year.

Dr Lutton, who was spurred on by support for his opinion piece in The West Australian last month criticising the plan, said it had too many aspects of poor planning.

He said a redesign involving the community should have more appropriate and human-scale development on the parcel of land south of Riverside Drive between William and Barrack streets.

Planning Minister John Day said he believed the WA community supported the project and recognised the Government's plan to revitalise central Perth.

"Far from being a blight on the city, the Perth waterfront project will become a major destination for locals and visitors," he said.

Mr Day said though a tunnel remained possible, diverting Riverside Drive featured consistently in various plans over the years.