THE erosion of property rights and lack of certainty were the two main problems identified by participants in the WA Business News heritage forum.
Property Council executive director Joe Lenzo said that, as an asset class, property was by far the highest contributor to the State budget.
“In terms of cost it is no doubt that right now the property industry feels itself under some kind of siege, and heritage is one element of cost that we need to flush out,” he said.
“It is an industry that sees itself losing its property rights and property rights are going to be a major issue over the next 12 months or so.”
Sandover Pinder director Grayam Sandover identified the lack of certainty in the CBD as one of the biggest problems facing property owners. He said that if a heritage listing was placed on a property it locked that property up for a significant period of time.
“The fact is that we have buildings, which at this stage are not heritage listed but may be put on an interim registrar or may become listed in the future, compared to many property owners who don’t know that to be the case,” Mr Sandover said.
“I think that is where a lot of the argument occurs, because they see that as a big brother approach, rather than a work together approach.”
Heritage Council chairman Patric de Villiers said a coherent strategic plan was required to provide more certainty for property owners and developers.
“My problem is that the town planning scheme is what we thought Perth was going to be 10, 15, 20 years ago, and the economics have gone somewhere else,” he said.
“I want to restructure the big-picture strategic thing and I’d like to have a bit of a run to see what I can do for heritage in the game.”
Hocking Planning and Architecture consultant Ian Hocking said central Hay Street in Perth was a good example of a precinct that required a strategic plan to enable the area to be revitalised.
Mr Hocking said that, in addition to being listed heritage buildings, the fact the buildings were on a pedestrian mall meant that planning approvals had encouraged the use of ground floors and the disposal of upper level access.
He said when owners tried to get the whole building working again they were faced with a number of issues, such as access into the mall only out of hours, extended contract times and lack of certainty about being able to get a tenant at the end of it.
“So almost all of those owners are family businesses, none of them can move,” Mr Hocking said.
“They can’t do it by themselves; they can only do it with the Heritage Council and City of Perth recognising there is a series of issues that specifically has to be dealt with on central Hay Street, otherwise they are all just going to rot.”
Mr Sandover said it was often difficult to adapt heritage buildings to meet the modern-day demands under current regulations.
“If you look at a lot of the ground floor area in the city it is all retail, and by that [I mean] it is retail in a particular form,” he said.
“Usually within a certain size, often with a five to six-metre frontage of shop front that was economic at that time.”
Mr Sandover said part of the problem was that many heritage buildings traditionally did not have parking on sites and “if they did it was a few bays out the back of a collection of outhouses”.
“Whereas now the only way you can properly work parking is to put it below the ground. Now to put parking under-ground you need to clear what is above it, from a developer’s perspective that is a really hard thing to do,” he said.
