[COM] The Rowlands Apartments | 55m | 16lvls | Residential

[Will]

Judging by this article I assume this project was rejected.

Having said that I would like to change my position. I was under the impression that this was a student apartments development. I was not aware that the developer had decided to change the scope from student apartments to normal apartments. As such, when viewed as normal apartments, people will live in permanently, then I agree with the ACC in rejecting this development.

It is also great to note that the reason this was rejected was not its height but rather the small size of the apartments.

City 'dog box' plan angst

Jessica WhitingCouncil25 Nov 10 @ 12:00pm by


PLANS for a $25 million apartment building on Rowland Place have been criticised by the City Council’s Development Assessment Panel (DAP) for having living space the size of “dog boxes”.

The plans, lodged by A D’Andrea and Associates, show a 15-level building almost 50m high - above the council’s 40m limit for that area - earmarked for a site alongside Her Majesty’s Theatre on Grote St.

A staff report presented to the panel at a meeting on Monday (November 22) said the sizes for 40 affordable apartments in the building were below the council’s minimum requirements of 50 sq m for one-bedroom lodgings and 75 sq m for those with two bedrooms.

Cr Anne Moran said if the council had minimum space requirements “they should be stuck with”. “It is not the height that is the deal breaker with this, it is the quality of the internal fitout which screams no,” Cr Moran told the meeting.

“They will be little dog boxes.”

The DAP will advise the state’s Development Assessment Commission - which holds the power to decide on projects worth more than $10 million - that it does not support the plans.

At least six projects rejected by the council’s DAP have been approved by the DAC since July 2009.

[metro]

maybe they should double the height when they increase the size of the apartments. 102m, 30 floors sounds like the perfect height for this part of the city to me.

[Prince George]

I know it's already been said, but unless designating those apartments as "affordable" gives the developers some other benefits from the council, I don't think that they have any business setting minimum sizes. If there's a market for teeny-tiny dwellings in the city, then so be it. Do they set a maximum size too?

[Waewick]

if we move the scale that affordable means 35m2 then we are alot of trouble.

[stumpjumper]

any development that brings people into the city, especially the market precinct, gets my vote

Be serious.

I believe that 35 square metres of floor space is approximately the size of the 'student accommodation' involved. Please correct me if I'm wrong. 35sqm is tiny. Take 3 x 4 for a bedroom/wardrobe - that's 12sqm; 2 x 4 for a bathroom/toilet/laundry, that's 20sqm; 2 x 2 for a kitchenette, that's 24sqm, that leaves just over 3m x 3m for living space. Not for overnight accommodation, as in a micro hotel, but for living in on a yearly basis. No carpark.

That six developments recommended for refusal by Adelaide's DAP have been approved by the DAC is because all the proposals before the DAC have been approved; it is not a sign that Adelaide's DAP is wrong.

Here's a grim scenario. The Rann government, according to Michael O'Brien MP, is borrowing money to pay wages. Developers pay large sums to the ALP in the form of 'donations' - in fact SA leads the country in the percentage of donations to government received by our government. We are also the poorest mainland state.

The government, whose main aim at present is simply to hang on to power, is desperate for cash. A lot of people will lose their income, influence and lifestyle when Rann finally goes under. How compromised and vulnerable is the government to approving sub-standard developments because it needs the developers' donations? We can only guess.

ACC's DAP can only approve or disallow development based on compliance with the current development plan. The government's DAC does not make known the criteria by which it makes its decisions.

Let us hope that the members of DAC possess planning knowledge superior to the planners who produced the City of Adelaide Development Plan under the Development Act, and that they do not take into consideration the massive financial support given to the government by developers, either individually or as an industry.

Sub-standard buildings, despite being clad in lovely architectural renders, benefit only their developers. We are risking building the slums of tomorrow - exactly the sort of thing the professionally produced planning legislation is designed to prevent.

If the development legislation is inadequate, or behind the times, let's propose change by the proper process. To continue allowing the legislation to be sidestepped by developers on a case by case basis is the worst possible way of managing development and the future shape of our city.

Build this development, but build it better. Put good design at the top of the priorities, instead of maximum profit to the developer.

[Omicron]

I know it's already been said, but unless designating those apartments as "affordable" gives the developers some other benefits from the council, I don't think that they have any business setting minimum sizes. If there's a market for teeny-tiny dwellings in the city, then so be it. Do they set a maximum size too?

Hear, hear. If I have 75% of the dollars and am happy to live in 75% of the apartment, I see absolutely no reason why the market is not allowed to provide me with that. If the asking price is not commensurate with the limited floorspace, then they'll have one hell of a time trying to sell them and won't build any more. Developer loses. Simple.

I do wonder exactly what sort of resident is being encouraged here - I must take up at least 50 square metres and have at least one car, and now that I've got this mandated space and car I can't afford to actually buy anything quite so big so I'll have to be subsidised by the Government and have the Council subsidise the developers as an 'affordable' development. What? Why can't I just have a small, cheap apartment without a carpark and pay less to begin with?

Based on the floorplans of this proposal, I don't see why they're bothering with quite so many walls in the smallest apartments - the studio apartments make a bit more sense, and probably even more so if you took out the wall to the bathroom and made the whole thing like a hotel room. In fact, I note with a great deal of interest that almost every single hotel room in the delightful Currie St proposal has a smaller floor area than these so-called dog-boxes - I wonder if the DAP will place a strict time limit on how long I can stay in the 29 square metre hotel rooms before they evolve from luxury rooms into hazardous, criminally-small dog-boxes. Thank goodness we have the DAP to save us from these horrors!

[stumpjumper]

It's interesting to look where the pressure is coming from for very small dwellings and 'no minimum dwelling areas'.

Market pressure:
There is no pent up demand for city accommodation, just the steady trickle of the last decade or so, and there is no reason to think that the construction of more and higher buildings in the city will increase demand. There is presently an oversupply of higher end units for sale in the city, not so many as to seriously depress prices, but enough to last a few years at present levels of demand. The Precinct at the Balfour site is supplying 1300 mid-range units, including about 640 small student units without parking.

Unless the low, steady demand for new city dwellings grows substantially in the next couple of years - and there's no reason it should, given its history - the only area uncatered for buyers are at the lower priced, and sized end of the market, both for owner/occupiers and investors. Logically, the smaller the unit, the cheaper it will be, and larger its market will be.

No problem in building to cater for that market then? Several, actually.

First, development legislation and its rationale.
The Urban Development Institute of Australia, representing the development industry, has pushed for less regulation. By eliminating height restrictions and reducing “the relative importance of environmental standards for apartment buildings, given their potential to adversely impact on development yield” (as the UDI argued in its submission to the last City of Adelaide Draft General and Park Lands Plan Amendment Report) the UDI is simply doing a job for the businesses it represents.

“Adelaide will be at the cutting edge of planning practice once again,” the submission said. It “applauded” the council’s initiative (in trying to redice some bottlenecks in the development process) and “implored” it to see it through “without compromise”.

The UDI submission went further by suggesting playing down the influence of existing/desired character on new development, reducing the emphasis on the provision of community facilities, downplaying privacy issues, deleting reference to minimum dwelling sizes, and reducing “the relative importance of environmental standards for apartment buildings, given their potential to adversely impact on development yield”.

The submission effectively proposed 'planning-by-deal' or incentive zoning. In essence, it is a demand for more floorspace per site, without any benefit to anyone except the developer (see reduced... above). Such a demand illustrates the contradictory agendas of planning and development, and proposes resolving them not by a balance but by allowing the scales to swing 100% to the developers interests. One of the costs to the public is the decay of Adelaide's traditional ambience which is one of its few strengths as a visitor destination. But that, of course, under a qualitative approvals system, is just a matter of opinion.

Second, the advisability of very small dwelling sizes.
Central London, with land prices and demand vastly greater than Adelaide's, where there are still vacant sites and low quality single story buildings on developable sites, has generally a minimum studio apartment (1 occupant) size of 30sqm. A two occupant studio apartment requires 37sqm and a single bedroom two occupant apartment requires 45sqm. These minimum sizes are worked out ergonomically, ie with relaxation areas big enough to position a television a reasonable distance from a sofa, allowing for circulation space etc

In Adelaide, where it is common for students to sleep two or three to a single bedroomed flat, these ergonomics don't work.

So what are posters here suggesting? That we depreciate the urban fabric of central Adelaide by constructing buildings full of tiny, identical dwellings which are not in line with good planning practice, which are built as cheaply as possible and are very likely to be overcrowded?

And for what? To maximise some developer's profit at the expense of the whole community? To satisfy with any building of the developer's choice a naive desire to equate progress with cranes on the skyline, regardless of the quality of what they're building?

[Wayno]

Do similar (small) sized apartments exist in other Australian CBDs? how long have they been there? and what has been the result (are they slums)?

[Will]

I know it's already been said, but unless designating those apartments as "affordable" gives the developers some other benefits from the council, I don't think that they have any business setting minimum sizes. If there's a market for teeny-tiny dwellings in the city, then so be it. Do they set a maximum size too?

I think it is superficial to say there is a market for these tiny apartments.

The concept of a market implies that people have a choice. The people that will buy these apartments would do so, not because they want to live there but because that is the only choice they have. If people had a choice, they would prefer to live in something bigger.

I am uncomfortable with the idea of living in a society which shoves its lower income people into human filling cabinets. Australia is better than that.

[stumpjumper]

Well said Will, but a market is a market. There are people who will buy these properties. As you say, it's because they have no other choice.

There is a market for sub-standard meat too - people who cannot afford better quality product - but it is illegal to sell it.

In the same way, one of the functions of development legislation is to prevent the building of sub-standard dwellings, despite the market for them. There will always be developers who will build anything that sells, and they are the target of that legislation.

Do similar (small) sized apartments exist in other Australian CBDs? how long have they been there? and what has been the result (are they slums)?

Auckland has been through this. Typically, Adelaide does not look elsewhere for a guide to best practice, but only listens to the development lobby which has an obvious barrow to push. Until about 2005, Auckland city council argued that it had no legal power to impose minimum dwelling areas. This argument went hand in hand with a high level of cash donations from developers to political parties.

Apartments got as small as 12sqm for 'student studios'.

Then there was a court case against the approval of a non-complying 36 storey building including 29 levels of accommodation in a prominent city location. (Urban Auckland – The Society for the Protection of Auckland City and Waterfront Inc v Auckland City Council & Anor, CIV 407/04) The judge ruled against the proposal, citing its tiny unit floor areas and rooms without direct access to natural light.

A faction called City Vision was swept into power in the city council. The council announced that it had "No tolerance for poor-quality urban design. The new controls would stop poor quality developments in their tracks." Since then minimum floor areas have been enforced.

Auckland requirements are:

Studio 35sqm
1 bedroom 45sqm
2 bedroom 70sqm
3-plus bedroom 90sqm

Windows to be at least 20 per cent of floor area of exterior rooms.
Limits on the number of studio and one-bedroom units in any one development.

In Auckland at the time (2005-6), the oversupply of tiny 'student apartments' led to a drop in rents and values for the units and a rise in vacancy rates. Eg: "Tenants shun CBD’s shoebox apartments" - NZ Herald Nov 1 2005. This caught a lot of investors who found themselves with an empty property mortgaged for more than its value.

Things are working out in NZ as demand soaks up supply, but the small apartments are still in oversupply and harder to let.

The general picture for apartments is:

* Small: About 30sq m, $130,000 to $300,000, tenanted by students, low-wage CBD workers and Housing New Zealand Corporation tenants. High vacancies.

* Medium: About 50sq m, $300,000 to $750,000. Pitched at professionals working in the CBD. Low vacancies.

* Large: Well over 50sq m, $750,000-plus, often on the waterfront, plenty of parking, great views. Low vacancies.

It would be worth looking at rents, time taken to let, and vacancy rates of 'student accommodation' in Adelaide. It might avoid a period of correction.

I believe that Sydney has had a problem with student housing too.

[AtD]

Poor people? In our city? When they've finished cleaning our toilets they should go back to Craigmore where they belong!

Omicron: Slums only occour when the community does not have access to the ligitimate job market, be it though isolation, cutural, language or legal reasons. You do not get slums in Australian CBDs because of the concentration of the job market in the area and access to social services (the wole point of building in the CBD in the first place).

Illegal slums are a different matter. If a landlord is going to cram 6 people in a 30sqm unit, they're just as likely to cram 10 people in a 50sqm unit. Management of this issue is a different relm of planning policy.

Will: I think your sympathy for the prospective tenants is misplaced. In the absence of affordable CBD accomidation they will be forced to live in the outer suburbs. There they will be isolated from jobs, transport and essential services so would be far worse off. Minimum apartment sizes do not prevent nor solve poverty, it mearly displaces it to the outer suburbs where it is out of sight, out of mind. The social outcomes for those people would be far, far worse.

stumpjumper: It is not the role of either Council nor development policy to determine if demand exists, or if an oversupply or undersupply exists or is likely to exist. This is a commercial consideration for the financier and developer to consider. To suggest a development should be denied for these reasons opens up a moral hazard where developers can blame (perhaps even sue) the authorities for changes in market conditions. It is the developers risk to take.

In Auckland at the time (2005-6), the oversupply of tiny 'student apartments' led to a drop in rents and values for the units and a rise in vacancy rates. Eg: "Tenants shun CBD’s shoebox apartments" - NZ Herald Nov 1 2005. This caught a lot of investors who found themselves with an empty property mortgaged for more than its value.

So basically the market did what the market does naturally.

[Prince George]

Stumpy, I'm confident that your posts have been built upon fallacious reasoning, although I'm not sure of exactly which kind. I think that at heart it boils down to (1) they are written with such loaded language, (2) they often contain inappropriate comparisons and (3) your reasoning sometimes takes unjustifiable leaps.

The question at hand is: is the size of the apartment alone reason enough to justify rejecting this building? Since the size limit is written into the regulations, then the question should more properly be: should regulations mandate a minimum size of an apartment in a building such as this? I, and others, have said that I do not believe that a minimum size in and of itself is an appropriate regulation. From this you appear to draw the conclusion that we are opposed to regulation per se and that we believe that the invisible hand of the free market can make the right choices.

Then, under the title of "development legislation and its rationale" you do not discuss development legislation or its rationale but instead describe the UDI's submissions to dilute it, leaving it to us to draw the conclusion that if the UDI don't want it it must be desirable. Likewise, under the title "the advisability of very small dwelling sizes", you start by saying that the small apartments in London (who has a minimum, but it almost half the size of ours) work well, and then declare that "these ergonomics don't work" here based on the assertion that "it is common for students to sleep two or three to a single bedroomed flat" and leave it at that, without examining the possibilities that (1) the larger minimum makes them too expensive for students to afford by themselves, or (2) that students in London are sleeping multiple to a one-bed flat too. You then put words in our mouths with lines like:

So what are posters here suggesting? That we depreciate the urban fabric of central Adelaide by constructing buildings full of tiny, identical dwellings which are not in line with good planning practice, which are built as cheaply as possible and are very likely to be overcrowded?

Which was both begging the question and arguing by inflammatory rhetoric.

I don't think that it is any secret that I am hugely concerned with the state of property developments across Adelaide. I have repeatedly complained ('carping on' is probably the right term) about the harm done to our streetscapes, to our "urban fabric", to the loss of characterful buildings replaced by generic rectangles. You might recollect the spat I had with Nathan Paine on this very question, one where I was insisting he respond to your own questions to him. I hope that makes it clear that I do not want "buildings full of tiny, identical dwellings" that are "built as cheaply as possible", which was an inappropriate conclusion to draw from the fact that I do not believe that the size of the apartments alone is an appropriate regulatory control, much in the same way that I also oppose parking minimums or simple height limits (rather than, say, floor-area-ratios).

My contention is that the regulations that we have are the wrong regulations. At some point we gave up on regulating the outcomes that we actually want and decided that we could only regulate various artifacts of the designs: heights, setbacks, parking spaces, and (it seems) dwelling sizes. These regulations aren't providing us with the city and buildings that we want, indeed in many cases they are actively preventing it. You yourself wrote of how the current codes are so prescriptive that you can essentially predict the building from the plot area alone. Now you are presenting a false choice, that rejecting this 50sqm minimum means accepting any old trash. You know perfectly well that isn't how we feel about the matter, and indeed you don't even believe yourself that this dichotomy is true.

And so I feel stuck between two factions out at either end of the spectrum who are controlling the dialogue on development in Adelaide, neither of whom show any inclination to build the Adelaide that I want. At one end, the property council and the UDI who insist that the problem is overregulation and the solution is to leave them totally to their own devices; at the other the various heritage/parklands/neighbourhood "protection" groups who insist that the problem is developers being given a free hand and the solution is tighter controls. Believing as I do that both of these groups are wrong (and not just a little wrong, but deeply wrong) and really just represent two sides of the same problem. I am fed up to the back teeth of this constant stream of glass-and-concrete cubes and of faux-heritage claptrap respectively, I find myself stuck between the Scylla of Nathan Paine and the Charybdis of Anne Moran, and you're not giving me any reason to hope that there's going to be a third path struck.

[AtD]

Nice post Prince George.

[Nort]

Do similar (small) sized apartments exist in other Australian CBDs? how long have they been there? and what has been the result (are they slums)?

For a couple of months in late 2006 after I moved there for work, I lived in a studio apartment in Brisbane where the only interior wall was the one which separated the shower and toilet from the rest of the apartment. I never measured it, but would estimate the entire space was 25-30 square m.

It wasn't a fantastic living space, but the location and view made up for it to an extent. I wouldn't have wanted to live there long term (although I did consider it) but there were some people in the building who did.

I'm torn when it comes to developments such as this. On the one hand, there have to be some minimum standards for human decency, but on the other it is important to have spaces that are small/cheap enough for people to be able to afford to live in the CBD who would not have otherwise been able to. The place in Brisbane that I lived in wasn't perfect by any means, but the situation would have been much more inconvenient for me if it wasn't available.

[stumpjumper]

AtD:

Stumpjumper: It is not the role of either Council nor development policy to determine if demand exists, or if an oversupply or undersupply exists or is likely to exist. This is a commercial consideration for the financier and developer to consider. To suggest a development should be denied for these reasons opens up a moral hazard where developers can blame (perhaps even sue) the authorities for changes in market conditions. It is the developers risk to take.

Agreed. I'm not suggesting that any development be approved or not approved on the basis of a DAP or a DAC trying to second guess the market as to over or under supply. I would say that almost every attempt to regulate a market fails - 'artificial' constraints or subsidies of supply/demand tend to causes some unwanted reaction elsewhere.

However, setting a minimum size for a dwelling, even if there is demand for dwellings under that size, is not quite the same as market regulation. It's actually the imposition of a standard.