Students demand action on derelict Perth office building with 'put a sock on it' campaign
Students demand action on derelict Perth office building with 'put a sock on it' campaign
A school assignment turns into a highly visible community campaign for improvements to an empty office building in Kalamunda's town centre, labelled the "pigeon hotel" by locals.
The owner doesn't care about the building, its just a glorified mobile phone tower for them now. You can see it in one of the pictures.
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But some people do have a bit of a negative reaction to it — they say that we should spend our time doing something more worthy, because they don't think that anything's going to happen from us doing this
This is my take pretty much. For the community it's an eyesore, but for the owners it's about money. No one is going to spend a heap of money, or sell for less than market value, just because there's a petition.
If everyone signing the petition chipped in $1,000 that would solve the problem.
The council is the petition's intended audience, not the building owner. The council has invested money to improve the area before so there's a chance the increased public pressure makes a real difference behind the dais. They could end up helping the owner demolish the building or offload it to someone who wants to fix it up, without losing private money, for the purpose of benefiting the public.
Sorry I just don't see how that can work.
I have no idea of the actual values but I would be very surprised if the actual building (not including land value) in it's current dilapidated state is worth less than $1m. Would you sacrifice $1m just because the public didn't like the look of your building?
Offloading it to someone else who wants to fix it up is easier said than done. Selling a property like that isn't like selling a house where there's thousands of potential buyers. You need to find someone who wants to buy it. Selling it because of public pressure again means selling it for much less than it's real market value.
Sooner or later some government department will be interested in leasing it. They and the owner will bear the various costs of bringing the building to a useable state.
All great points. I don't know anything about Australian laws but am a regional planner in the US. I was just referring to a very common thing here where a large rotting building, like the very common dead malls littering our suburban landscape, are owned by private firms with no interest in fixing them up. They're just a tax haven or something for them to borrow against and a blight on the community.
Many local governments with enough means and public support will spend public funds to buy the dead mall to demolish it themselves, and lease or sell the land to a private developer who does what the public body wants, with the goal of increasing the tax base where they were otherwise not collecting many taxes and developing the type of building/use they see as the best fit for the site. Usually there's some sort of public benefit in exchange for the developer getting the land at a good price with the blighted building removed like parking or park space. Public money is lost up front but hopefully retained over time. But I work in a very rural and disadvantaged area so have not been directly involved in such a project.
Ultimately I think the sock thing is a great example of what US new urbanists call "guerilla urbanism" and hopefully it moves the needle in some way.
Fair enough. I can see how that might work with a dead mall, where the building really does have no value as its format just isn't viable. A municipality might intervene for everyone's benefit.
In this case, the building looks ugly, but still has value. It's not unreasonable to imagine that property would be with $1m less if the building were demolished.
Unfortunately in many cases rentable value has fallen from its former glory, and owners don't want to rent for a realistic price as it may reduce the value of the property itself.
IMO the best solution would be a vacancy tax.