Significance: 

The City of Adelaide Park Lands are the most distinctive and unique asset of Adelaide's cultural landscape.  The Park Lands are of unique and potent character, natural beauty, solitude and passive recreation, a definitive icon and invaluable asset of the City, essential to the City's cultural identity and growth of the State's tourism enterprises.

The Old Grandstand within Victoria Park is the oldest remaining grandstand at the racecourse, a site used for horseracing since 1840.  It is a good example of a grandstand constructed in the 1880s and its style and design are typical of grandstands in that era.  The structure is important for its aesthetic characteristics as a dominant feature of the Park Lands.

Description of Threat: 

The Government of South Australia is proposing the construction of, within Victoria Park, a multipurpose grandstand (over 250 metres long and three and four stories high), administrative and function facility building for motor sport and horse racing.  The proposal involves realigning the existing horse racing track away from the historic grandstand and demolishing all the existing structures relating to the Victoria Park Racetrack, with the exception of the Old Grandstand.

The proposal will reduce the open character of Victoria Park, exacerbate the existing and inappropriate interference with the primary purpose of the Park Lands (open space and passive recreation), and is contrary to its desired character.  Increasingly, commercial developments such as this have been permitted in the Park Lands, such as the Hyatt Regency Hotel, Adelaide Convention Centre and Wine Centre.

The proposal is subject to development approval by the Adelaide City Council.  Subject to those approvals, construction is scheduled to commence in the second half of 2007 and will be progressed so that the main elements are completed by the end of 2008.

 NOTE:  An amended proposal was recently approved by the Adelaide City Council allowing the building of a grandstand over 200 metres long and three stories high.

Action Required: 

The vision for the Park Lands is that it be protected and enhanced as a place of unique and potent character, natural beauty, solitude and passive recreational endeavours.  To do this the Park Lands should be recognised as one of South Australia's most valuable assets and essential to its cultural identity by its entry on the State Heritage Register.  A conservation and management plan is required in order to develop soundly based policies for the use and management of the area with legislation to back-up those policies. 

 A thorough assessment of the heritage values of the present racecourse complex is required and opportunities for reinstating some of the context of the heritage stand should be explored.