East Perth power station to be transformed into arts and entertainment precinct for Perth Festival - ABC News

By Andrea Mayes

Topic:Arts, Culture and Entertainment

The East Perth power station will form the central backdrop for next year's Perth Festival. (Supplied: Perth Festival)

The long abandoned East Perth power station will form the backdrop for the Perth Festival for the next four years under new artistic director Anna Reece.

It will be the first time the public has been allowed to visit the venue since it shut in 1981.

Other festival highlights include a re-imagined Embassy Ballroom at the Perth Town Hall and a 12-hour performance of the epic ancient Indian poem Mahabharata.

The dilapidated East Perth power station, which has stood abandoned on the banks of the Swan River since it was decommissioned more than 40 years ago, is about to get a new lease of life, as the Perth Festival prepares to reinvent it as an arts and entertainment venue over the next four years.

The power station, which closed in 1981, will form the central backdrop to the annual arts festival from next February until 2028, with two separate outdoor stages for live performances, a nightly light show projected onto the buildings, as well as food trucks and picnic spaces.

It will be the first time the site has been open to the public since the power station closed its doors in 1981, although the interior of the buildings will remain closed.

Unveiling the 2025 program, new Perth Festival artistic director Anna Reece, the first Perth-born director in the festival's 70-year history, said her debut program would be "simultaneously contemporary and nostalgic", and more than half of the 104 events would be free.

Casa Musica will take place on the banks of the Swan River at the East Perth power station, and is part of the Perth Festival's entertainment precinct on the site. (Supplied: Perth Festival)

The power station will include Casa Musica, a "vibrant celebration of music, food, and culture inspired by the lively piazzas and parks of southern Europe" where people can picnic in the afternoon and be entertained by musicians from around the world, while after dark the main stage will host ticketed live music including Peter Garett, Nils Frahm and Norwegian DJs Royksopp among others.

As well as reactivating the power station, the festival will also breathe new life into the Perth Town Hall, which will play host to a re-imagined Embassy Ballroom — a revered venue on the corner of William Street and the Esplanade that hosted popular dances from 1928 until its demolition in 1982.

The new Embassy will also encourage patrons to dance and features a line-up of live music from classical to jazz, country and world music.

Beacons of light will illuminate the length of the Swan River in a work called Karla Bidi, which is based on the Noongar tradition of lighting fires to greet and guide visitors. (Supplied: Perth Festival)

The Swan River will be illuminated each night by Karla Bidi, beacons of lights set at strategic points along the riverbanks and inspired by the Noongar tradition of lighting fires to welcome visitors

Other festival highlights include musicians PJ Harvey and the Fontaines, virtual reality experience Ultimate Safari from Tanzania, and the epic ancient Hindu poem Mahabharata, performed over 12 hours by Toronto's Why Not Theatre.

New Perth Festival artistic director Anna Reece is the first Perth-born director of the festival in its 70-year history. (ABC News: Ruby Littler)

The East Perth Power station site has had a chequered history, with numerous failed attempts to repurpose it in recent years.

In 2015 the Colin Barnett led state government tried to sell the power station to private developers, hoping to turn it into a waterfront residential, commercial and arts precinct.

However, that idea fell through when the five parties interested in buying it failed to bid high enough for the government, which had wanted the buyer to absorb the cost of relocating the Western Power station switch yard, estimated at more than $100 million, as well as the cost of the site itself.

In 2020 the McGowan government announced it would spend $50 million for the necessary site works to enable the site to be redeveloped — a figure that has since ballooned out to $121 million.

Around that time, the state had valued the site at just $1, due to the issues associated with it.

At the same time it said it had approved a joint venture between Kerry Stokes's Australian Capital Equity and Andrew Forrest's Minderoo Group as its preferred developers, promising a a mix of new residential, commercial, recreational and tourism opportunities.

An artist's impression of the proposed redevelopment of the East Perth Power Station was released by the sate government in 202, but the plan has never been realised. (Supplied: Kerry Hill Architects)

But this plan also fell over when the billionaires failed to progress the idea amid cooling relations between them relating to competing commercial interests, and their rights to develop the site expired.

The government is continuing its efforts to try to find a developer for the site, with Tourism WA recently spruiking it as a "unique opportunity to develop an integrated tourism offering, popular with a broad demographic of visitors."

East Perth power station has been closed to the public since 1981, and next year's Perth Festival will be the first opportunity for people to visit it since 1981. (ABC News: Gian De Poloni)

It wants an upscale hotel to be built on the site, with a Tourism WA brochure aimed at potential investors promising "the precinct’s riverfront location, coupled with its proximity to key attractions including the award-winning [Perth] Stadium, makes it an ideal site for high-end accommodation."

The site is listed on the Heritage Council's register, and the government wants any future development to "celebrate the heritage of the Power Station Building".

The government's clean up of the site, which includes the removal of asbestos, was scheduled to the completed by the end of this year, just weeks before the festival opens in February next year, but Housing Minister John Carey said it would take longer.

He said there was still asbestos contamination within the power plant but reiterated all Perth Festival events would be outside the building.

Attempts to remove asbestos from the East Perth power station are ongoing, the WA Government says. (ABC News: Ruby Littler)

"We are now re-working a new master plan for this site, but I was to be very clear this has been a huge job," Mr Carey said.

"There is a level of contamination within the building, there is also structural issues that need resolving so I not going to shy away from that."

He said the government hoped it would eventually be able to rid the building's interior of asbestos and open it to the public.

The East Perth power station has lain abandoned for decades, but is about to get a new lease of life. (ABC News: Ruby Littler)

It's long been hoped the redevelopment of two historic power stations on London's Thames River could serve as possible blueprints for the East Perth power station's redevelopment.

The Bankside power station was turned into the world-renowned Tate Modern art gallery in 2000, while the repurposed Battersea Power Station eventually opened in 2022 after a series of developers promised to deliver various ambitious projects, ranging from a theme park to a leisure complex and upscale accommodation.

It's now home to bars, restaurants, shops and apartments.

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