After Elizabeth Quay, Perth needs an infrastructure pipeline to keep WA growing: PCA

The successful opening of Perth’s new waterfront plaza, Elizabeth Quay, shows that Western Australia is hungry for urban renewal and a pipeline of urban infrastructure needs to be mapped out following the end of the mining boom, says the Property Council of Australia.

With Elizabeth Quay complete and other projects like the City Link nearly finished, what’s the next to help keep WA growing after the mining boom? 

“The Property Council on behalf of the WA development industry has the answer, a better infrastructure delivery framework and transparent project assessment criteria. These are exactly the recommendations of the Property Councils recent reports Keep WA Growing and Mind the Gap,” Property Council WA executive director Joe Lenzo said. 

In ‘Keep WA Growing’ the Property Council has assessed nine key infrastructure projects of which priority will be given to three which will have the greatest economic flow-on effect for the state — Max Light Rail, the Peel Economic and Environmental Initiative, and the Western Trade Coast. 

In ‘Mind the Gap’, the Property Council found that the absence of an independent state body to advise the planning, prioritising and delivery of major infrastructure was costing WA investment and jobs. 

“The formation of a state infrastructure body and preparing a pipeline of future work has worked in other states, particularly in the attraction of scarce federal funding,” Lenzo said.

According to the WA government website, Elizabeth Quay is the centrepiece of a plan to revitalise Perth. The government expects the plaza by the Swan River to be a future workplace for more than 10,000 people and attract more than $2billion in private investment.