No end in sight for North Adelaide block beef | New suburb deemed for the living | Duo’s demise
This week, InSider accepts the controversy around a North Adelaide apartment block isn’t quite behind us, hears from the Premier about finding a home for the state-sanctioned morgue and applauds a social media mascot for once.
Biting the hand that feeds you
A developer of a controversial apartment block took aim at the Adelaide City Council this week in The Advertiser and the tabloid didn’t hesitate to use it to promote its campaign to “build a bigger, better South Australia”
The digital headline that landed in readers’ inbox on Tuesday claimed: “Adelaide City Council in the crosshairs as big business unveils big plans”, joining the rage bait pile on with headlines “war on cars” and “fight square” that were published by the paper in the past week.
Commercial & General executive chairman Jamie McClurg, whose firm is developing the 88 O’Connell Street apartment block, accused the council of putting “the interests of a small and relatively privileged fraction of the state’s population” ahead of the broader community.
While this is not the first time the council has been accused of being out of touch (just see the InDaily comments section), the words packed an extra punch given the controversial history of the apartments that the council were hoping to put behind it.
The $300 million project on the old Le Cornu site, which recently topped out at 14 storeys, copped criticism from residents who were initially promised a “modest” development and because of reports the council overpaid for the long-vacant site.
Let us not forget the council still hasn’t received a full payment from Commercial & General for the land, with their contract stating that the developer has until June 30 this year to cough up the $18.5 million, which is tied to apartment sales.
McClurg suggested the City of Adelaide be “integrated into a broader metropolitan governance structure”.
Councillor Phillip Martin raised the matter at the end of the council meeting on Tuesday, asking if the Lord Mayor or council administration had spoken to McClurg to “understand what it is he is talking about?”
Lord Mayor Jane Lomax-Smith told the meeting she hasn’t “thought of doing that, but I am happy to think about it”.
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Councillor Henry Davis couldn’t help but get in on the action, asking “Have we received any formal correspondence from the state government to disband the City of Adelaide?”
But before council haters get too excited, Lomax-Smith responded: “My experience of sacking councils is that the state governments very rarely write a courteous letter to the Lord Mayor, they act expediently, dramatically and with incisive accuracy so I don’t think we’ll be waiting for a letter.”
Now the question is, will Lomax-Smith and councillors cop an invite to the tower’s grand opening – planned for late August?
InSider contacted the Lord Mayor’s office to find out and was told: “Mr McClurg has every right to express his opinion in an open democracy”.
“That’s what public debate is about and that’s what all councillors do when they express their views in council debate,” Lomax-Smith said.
Slow go for Unley speed signs
On Wednesday the speed limit changed from 60km/h to 50km/h on Unley Road, but no new signs were out to remind drivers.
When asked on ABC Radio where the signs were, City of Unley Mayor Michael Hewitson said, “I have no idea”.
He went on to say he was not sure when the signs were going up as it was a Department of Infrastructure and Transport (DIT) responsibility, and he wasn’t sure if the 43-degree heat was maybe posing a problem in their installation.
It seems DIT contractors understood signage was supposed to be replaced ON Wednesday, instead of BY Wednesday, and the extreme heat meant the sign change was scheduled for later in the evening.
InSider asked Unley Council for an update on the signage and was told despite a small delay, all signage has now been changed and the new 50km/h speed signs were up as of 4am Thursday, February 13.
No place for dead people
UDIA CEO Liam Golding (a former government advisor) quickly set the straight-talking tone of last week’s urban development lunch with a very public shot at Premier Peter Malinauskas’s double garage policy and how it would not get cars off the clogged streets but instead would increase the cost of housing.
Not to be outdone, the Premier later deviated from his speech about the size of wastewater pipes being installed in the northern suburbs (apparently urban development minister Nick Champion can stand up in them) to give the audience a little insight into Cabinet proceedings.
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Talking about the new Southwark development at the old West End Brewery, Malinauskas said he upped the new dwellings count by kicking out people who couldn’t complain.
“There’s a little story for you that I haven’t shared in the public realm,” he said. “Treasury officials won’t be happy.”
“So we’re in a Cabinet, and they bounce in the plans for Southwark and Forensics SA was set to be put on the brewery site.”
Before continuing with his Cabinet reveal, he acknowledged the state-sanctioned morgue needs a new home because the place they’re in at the moment is decrepit.
“It’s a big and an important facility,” the Premier said. “You don’t want to end up there, but you could.”
But the plans – which would save Treasury from having to buy land someplace else – showed it taking up about a third of the entire new development area.
“I was particularly unpleased about this proposition, because here we have the park lands, train lines, tram lines, you know, minutes from the city, and we were going to put dead people in there.
“I said ‘They [the dead] can’t complain about where they go, they don’t need the amenity of such a strategically valuable site, how about we put the living there, and we’ll find another place for the dead?’
“So that got bounced out of cabinet, resulted in a bit of delay, but as a consequence, we’ve now got 1300 homes rather than 1000.”
RIP Duolingo
Speaking of the dead, much loved mascot Duo, the Duolingo Owl died this week, with the brand posting an announcement on social media.
The post quickly went viral, as the language-learning app’s social media team often do.
InSider (who by the way boasts a 1055-day Greek learning streak on the app), began to theorise. Did their social media manager, Zaria Parvez who has earned 205.5k on TikTok for dressing up as the owl, quit and this is her swan song? Nope, Zaria is still posting.
We fear Duo’s death is paving the way for a rebrand of the app, but we are enjoying the content the stunt has generated.
The brand’s France account spoofed the Pretty Little Liars theme song, triggering all of us who grew up with the murderous teen drama.
Pop singer-songwriter Dua Lipa, a long-time fan of the owl mourned the loss on X, writing “Til’ death duo part”.
Other brands jumped on the content bandwagon, including the Oodie which has a mascot of its own – something we never would have known if it wasn’t for their mournful Duo TikTok which has now amassed 70.7k views.
Strawberry Shortcake, NYX Cosmetics and Scrub Daddy were some of the other brands in the comments section and even the NSW Police made a TikTok about it.
Love him or hate him, Duo has our culture and our algorithms in a chokehold even in death.
We do have to ask though, of all the mascots to lose… why couldn’t it have been Trev?!
