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A revamp of the Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre has likely been canned, with the state government stating its priority was the delivery of its hospital building program.
WA Premier Roger Cook announced the redevelopment in January 2024, stating that bringing the building to the river would “right a historic wrong”, and that “our city deserves better than a shed on the river”.
Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre concept images from Wyllie and Brookfield.
Now, more than a year later, there are reports that the project has been shelved after the state government had already spent $35.5 million.
The works, which were meant to get underway in October, were predicted to cost $1.6 billion according to media reports – although leaseholders Wyllie and Brookfield had declined to put a firm price tag on the project.
When asked by this masthead whether the redevelopment had been scrapped, a government spokesperson said that “the priority for the government is the delivery of our hospital building program”.
“We have worked closely with leaseholders for the past two years and greatly admire their commitment to the PCEC and the broader tourism and hospitality sectors,” they said.
“As a part of the government’s mid-year review process, we have been working through the priorities for our capital works budget. The government will formally announce outcomes from this process very soon.
“As we have done over the last 8½ years, we won’t hesitate in making the difficult decisions necessary to keep our budget strong and deliver the infrastructure and services Western Australians need.”
The redevelopment plans have recently caused concerns over the impact they would have on traffic.
In August, City of Perth Lord Mayor Bruce Reynolds – then acting lord mayor – told Radio 6PR that the planned upgrade could cause eight months of gridlock in the city, particularly around getting on and off the freeway.
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“Obviously it’s a massive concern,” he said.
“In that precinct, there’s around 21,000 cars [per day] that use those ramps to get on and off the freeway; they will now need to be dispersed on other roads and typically those roads are already quite busy.
“There’s no bones about it, there’s going to be pain involved with this improvement.
“Judging on some of those early predictions … easily on a good day it’s going to add half an hour in that bottleneck … going south via the Mounts Bay Road delivery road, but also going into Nedlands.”
The council had flagged a request to review alternative options to minimise the traffic disruption.
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