North Terrace features the iconic but long-vacant Gawler Chambers. Photo: Nat Rogers/InDaily

A new council grants scheme is the latest effort to fill Adelaide’s abandoned and vacant buildings with innovative start-up businesses.

Entrepreneurs will be eligible for up to $30,000 each under the Building Activation and Business Startup program agreed to by Adelaide City Council this week.

The scheme is different from the Renew Adelaide model – which arranges low-cost, short-term leases with the possibility of longer-term leases if the business is a success – because it subsidises the start-up costs of businesses accepting longer-term leases from the start.


The council has budgeted $200,000 for the scheme – funds which entrepreneurs will have to match – to occupy buildings that have been sitting idle and unused for years.

Similar grants schemes exist in Sydney and Melbourne.

“This is focused on a more long-term activation,” deputy Lord Mayor Houssam Abiad told InDaily.

Property Council chief executive Daniel Gannon said the scheme sounded like money well-spent.

“It sounds like an investment in businesses of the future and jobs of the future,” he said.

He told InDaily the program would be a complement to the activities of Renew Adelaide, which he said would become increasingly important over the next decade because of thousands of square metres worth of new office space becoming available in the city.

“There will be more not less aging commercial buildings popping up across our skyline – that means more deactivated spaces,” said Gannon.

“Vacancy rates in the C and D-rated building stock is 17.2 and 19.7 per cent.

“These numbers will increase over the next five years with more stock coming onto the market.

However, he said, “a number of tenants undertake a flight to quality” when new stock becomes available, which was “a good problem to have”.


Gannon said there were several reasons why new businesspeople find it difficult to get a foot in the door and activate vacant spaces.

“There are some property owners who don’t have the expertise to identify potential businesses to fill their deactivated spaces,” he said.

“There’s no doubt that some building owners do undertake that sort of activation better than others.”

Gannon said that one of the central difficulties in activating vacant spaces – particularly in old buildings – were stringent compliance requirements for building standards and disability access requirements.

Abiad conceded that, though part of the program’s aim is to help new businesses struggling to cover the cost building standards and accessibility compliance, that “I don’t think $30,000 will go a long way” to cover those costs.

He said the scheme was designed mainly to provide capital to businesses with longer-term ambitions for “ready-to-go” but vacant spaces.

He also conceded entrepreneurs who are looking to enter highly visible vacant buildings – such as those on North Terrace – would need more than a council grant to successfully establish themselves.

“North Terrace is a discussion we’re having at a high level with the State Government,” Abiad said.

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Gannon said his organisation was also in discussions with Government – at all three levels – about North Terrace, and how building regulations could be partially relaxed so that developers could activate them.

The alternative, he said, was an Adelaide skyline punctuated by dozens of vacant buildings.

Abiad said that if there were a large take-up of the program by entrepreneurs, the council would consider increasing the value of available grants.

The council is expected to formally endorse the scheme at a meeting next week.

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