Stadiums and other city buildings
![[New office tower at Raine Square; note that Creative Commons licence does not apply to this image]](/photos/2006/rainesquare.jpg "New office tower at Raine Square; note that Creative Commons licence does not apply to this image")
Today the City of Perth announced approval for two new office projects — a huge redevelopment to make Raine Square less boring, and an office block on the ground-level carpark between the Parmelia Hilton and the Busport.
The Raine Square development, assuming it goes ahead, sounds very funky, but the Mounts Bay Road building isn’t nearly as awesome as the mixed-use projects that were previously approved for the site (man, we don’t have enough mixed-use in Perth). Then again, at least this one has a chance of going ahead and replacing that waste-of-space carpark. Now if only someone would do something about the waste of space carpark next door …- Yesterday, my local government announced it was giving up its bid to get a stadium built at Cockburn Central, after being told the Premier wasn’t all that interested in their plans. Oh well, I guess WA football will be set back a few years as vested interests squabble over redeveloping Subiaco Oval. (Of course, East Perth is the better of the two remaining options, if only because it creates river integration opportunities … which almost guarantees that it won’t be accepted.)
- Also on the sporting front: earlier this week, new plans were announced for Perth Arena, the new indoor stadium for the Hopman Cup. When I first heard about the bold design I thought it seemed cool, but the most recent pictures suggest that everything on the site other than the stadium itself is a bit uninspired.
![[Ugly carpark at Perth Arena; note that Creative Commons licence does not apply to this image]](/photos/2006/pertharena-carpark.jpg "Ugly carpark at Perth Arena; note that Creative Commons licence does not apply to this image")
Case in point: that carpark, which is way too big, hardly sympathetic to the design, and liable to end up like the Convention Centre carpark (i.e. overrun by commuters and useless to patrons).
Finally! Raine Square! Damn that place makes me sad everytime I walk through it. It’s such a waste.
[...] First up: the proposed new building for 140 William Street (above the new train station) is awesome. Not as pretty as the Raine Square development across the road (which is definitely going ahead, by the way), but very functional and very bold in its design — and we need more buildings in Perth with architecture that triggers strong reactions (as long as they’re not all bad …). [...]
[...] Interestingly, the disgusting carpark from the Perth Arena proposal has been replaced with a much nicer block structure with apartment buildings on top of it … but I wonder if that’ll actually go ahead? and if it will assuage the City of Perth’s worries about a lack of parking for the arena? Even more importantly, will the development create more pressure to turn that carpark into a Convention Centre-style carpark for commuters, rather than users of the facility it belongs to? And speaking of Perth Arena, that site seems to be crying out for a train station of some form, even if it’s events-only … [...]
Man.. the convention centre car park is meant to be for commuters too.. They did build an office block on the site remember…
Auditors need to have their cars close by..
But Raine square looks cool..
Hehe, fair enough … though I find it hard to believe that you E&Y folks need all 1500 bays!
A small percentage of commuters is fine, but (from what I’ve seen) that carpark seems to be overrun each day by people headed for the Terrace. The City of Perth basically ignored the needs of the Convention Centre when they plastered up big ads saying “cheap all-day parking!” …