Eric Granger, who helmed the Rundle Mall Management Authority from 2008 to 2016, responded to a councillor’s comments and a bid to slash $700,000 from AEDA’s budget, as reported by InDaily this week.

In Tuesday’s City Finance and Governance committee meeting, councillor Henry Davis criticised AEDA performance and pointed to high commercial vacancy rates.

“My view is that it is really your job to make us lots of money,” Davis said.

“My concern is that you’re not doing a good enough job, really.”

Granger fired back in a letter to InDaily’s Your Views.

“As a former Chair of the Rundle Mall Management Authority it has been my policy not to comment on the ACC or its administration, but this concept of reducing the AEDA seems ridiculous to the point of laughable,” he said.

“It is reasonable to ask what is the job of AEDA, and it should be clear that it is to develop ideas to attract people to the city. Then it is to attract landlords who will invest in property to attract more people to the city.

“So maybe we should ask what the council is doing to support the AEDA?

“The council relies on, and continues to increase, parking fees, the greatest single deterrent to people coming to the city to shop or socialise.

“Sure they can’t just give up the revenue, but a targeted program to use their own parking stations in innovative ways to attract people has always been in the too hard basket.”

Granger also said council policy discouraged development.

“The council ties up building owners in enormous red tape if they want to develop buildings in the city,” he said.

“The added cost of maintaining heritage buildings (which makes up a large percentage of vacant city buildings) is both prohibitively expensive and almost impossible to navigate.

“The large percentage of unoccupied buildings is because no one in their right mind would develop the older buildings that are unattractive to tenants or developers because of high costs and red tape.

“Of course we can also blame Covid and the work from home movement for less people needing tenancies, but that avoids the real issue.”

Granger said AEDA “receives a large percentage of their funding from the Rundle Mall Levy” which is paid by owners in the mall precinct for marketing and resources for the mall.

“The levy is not taken for general revenue but specifically to support and kept a vibrant city centre shopping precinct,” he said.

“There is no simple answer but hiding behind “everyone has to share the pain” is a total diversion away from placing the blame for this position on the Council, not the exceptional AEDA.

“They have propped up an ailing system against this type of negativity and the situation would have been far worse without them.”

The Rundle Mall Levy made up $3.89mil of AEDA’s $13.6mil income in 2023-24, according to AEDA’s business plan.

For the 2024/25 financial year, AEDA represents 5.9 per cent of the council’s draft budget.

Lord Mayor Jane Lomax-Smith said the council “strongly backs AEDA and values its important work in driving the city’s economic growth”.

“All of Council’s expenditure has been under review. There’s a great deal of debate about this budget but we just need to remember we are still in the process of developing a plan,” she said.

“We are committed to a budget that sensibly reduces costs and commits to only conservative new spending.”