The O’Connell Street Local Area, stretching from Pennington Gardens to Robe Terrace, will have a diversity of activities, services and economic opportunities to attract people to live and spend time in the neighbourhood.

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1. Redevelop the Women’s and Children’s Hospital site into mixed use residential, including affordable and social housing, and commercial uses respecting the surrounding Historic Areas, Heritage Places and the Adelaide Park Lands.

2. Advocate for new social infrastructure within any redevelopment of the Women’s and Children’s Hospital such as:
   • Arts and culture (performance, rehearsal and storage space)
   • Indoor sports centre
   • Indoor youth facilities

3. Provide additional young people/youth play provision, including nature play for young adults and spontaneous ‘pick-up’ sports facilities.

4. Investigate potential for at least two ‘play’ streets within the Wellington Square or Melbourne Street Local Area.

5. Leverage the development of 88 O’Connell Street to support additional vibrancy in the main street including business and tenancy mix, extended trading hours, and adaptive reuse of existing buildings for shop-top housing.

6. Connect North Adelaide and the inner suburbs to the city through a light rail loop extension improving the connection between O’Connell Street and Adelaide Oval and supporting transport mode shift for O’Connell Street.

7. Improve the paving and street furniture along O’Connell Street to provide a sense of identity and amenity and supporting growth in small business and residential living.

The place principles for the local area are:

• Retain the predominantly low density historic residential character of the local area east and west of O’Connell Street.
• Protect the long-range views and vistas and visual prominence of the St Peter’s Cathedral through the identification of important view corridors.
• Support mixed use redevelopment of the Women’s and Children’s Hospital site, including affordable and social housing, to provide a destination for local residents and visitors with ground floor uses and building facades that activate the street and contribute to the high-quality public realm.
• Provide a protected cycleway along the O’Connell to King William Street corridor, as an important contribution to the wider cycling network.
• Investigate options to connect North Adelaide to the CBD with additional public transport, including expanding the City Connector bus service and extending the tram line from North Terrace to North Adelaide (Strategy 3 - Strengthening the City Spine). 
• Support the vibrancy and economic activity of O’Connell Street, to attract visitors through:
  • Uses that generate a high frequency of pedestrian activity and activate the street
  • Extended business trading hours and diversified tenancy mix to address retail and commercial vacancies and enhance the vibrancy and safety of the area during the day and nighttime hours.
  • Public realm and streetscape greening
  • Protecting small businesses by maintaining small shopfront character and limiting large tenancy spaces within larger developments. 

• Protect existing land uses that play an important role in contributing to the area’s character and vibrancy.
• Minimise land use conflicts by designing to ensure that residential uses can co-exist with supporting commercial and leisure functions.
• Facilitate the development of strategic places using contextual analysis to ensure the siting, scale and mass of the built form address interface issues and respect the surrounding historic residential areas, including architectural and landscape features.
• Support residential growth to underpin the provision of new community infrastructure and local economic development while maintaining the area’s local identity, character and amenity.
• Support connection to the Adelaide Park Lands, in particular residents’ access to sporting and recreational activities.
• Diversify housing supply by converting vacant or underutilised space above ground floor shops or small offices (shop top housing), repurposing existing structures, and revitalising heritage and character buildings through innovative adaptive reuse.