Zero-Car Parking Paradigm for Perth PBSA Projects
A student housing complex planned for central Perth and another for inner Fremantle will have a combined 41 floors and negative net car bays if approved as presented by Western Australian developer Sirona Urban.
Open for consultation until February 18 is Sirona’s 33-level PBSA tower planned for the City Link strip where in recent times a rail-line was sunk, connecting Perth’s CBD to the colourful party precinct of Northbridge for the first time in 100 years.
If eventually approved by Development WA, the $170-million student housing project planned for a 3334sq m plot owned by Seven Entertainment Pty Limited at Telethon Avenue would have 854 beds and zero car bays.
The tower’s ground floor would have 162 bicycle bays, a prayer room, yoga studio, gymnasium, 34-chair cinema and just four motorcycle bays for the use of staff and commercial tenants.
Sirona managing director Matthew McNeilly told The Urban Developer his company had decided not to include onsite car bays given the likely travel habits of student residents.
“It is a central city location within walking distance of two major train stations and an underground bus port,” he said.
“Everyday destinations such as universities, supermarkets [and] nightlife are within minutes of the site on foot.”
The project is an easy walk to the Perth and Perth Underground rail stations and hence to all metropolitan train lines.
Curtin University sustainability professor Peter Newman said providing next-to-no parking for student housing was a “relatively new paradigm” for Australia’s sprawling western metropolis but was “normal in other cities the world over”.
He said students, including many whom he had taught, “desperately wanted” better public transport and housing closer to it.
“What invariably makes great cities is good public transport with good places that are built around the stations,” he said.
“Perth has some catching up to do but is now well on the way.”
The turnaround in parking thinking is also evident at a 5015sq m site in central Fremantle, 20km south-west of the Perth CBD. There, Sirona has advertised its $120-million plan to replace a big chunk of the defunct three-level Westgate carpark with a carless eight floors of student housing.
The Point Street site in the city’s east end also has an open-air, at-grade carpark where six car bays would vanish under Sirona’s plan.
Development of the site stalled in recent years when a DoubleTree by Hilton hotel approval achieved a decade ago by former owners was never acted upon.
The Sirona project would have 392 beds comprising 273 single-bed studios, 28 studios each shared by two scholarly residents, seven studios designed for students with disabilities and seven shared-living spaces that would each house eight students.
Also designed by MJA Studio, the student housing would be a short stroll to Notre Dame university, Fremantle train station and the 998 and 999 bus routes that circle metropolitan Perth and stop near the University of Western Australia, Murdoch University and Curtin University.
The building would include secure storage for 80 bicycles and 20 electric scooters.
A ground-floor cafe open to the public and a student services area would be located behind a mainly glazed street frontage. On Level 8, there would be a roof lounge, barbecue kitchen and provision for solar power.
In a further step beyond car dependency, the project would replace part of a double-vehicle crossover and some on-street car bays with a parklet to encourage alfresco dining for the planned cafe. Two further on-street parking bays would be converted to a loading zone.
Newman said car bay requirements made medium and high-density projects more expensive and stymied the construction of compact cities.
“When I started in this business 50 years ago, they closed the Fremantle railway down,” the former Fulbright scholar and Fremantle city councillor said.
“Thankfully they reinstated it some time later because that is definitely not the paradigm now.
“It’s not just the experts now, it’s the ordinary folk who are saying, ‘This is great; we like living in the city and we don’t need a car’.”
The defunct Westgate carpark opened in 1966 and in recent years has unofficially provided shelter for homeless people.
Public submissions on Sirona’s plans for the carpark close on February 11. The approval authority is WA’s Metro Inner Development Assessment Panel.
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