After many months of drawings, discussions and now a debate on the gun-barrel vista versus curved road design - that also centres around drainage, loss of public land and the building of a four-storey hotel - tenders have finally gone out for the upgrade of the Airlie main street.
Project Director Gary Hunt confirmed yesterday that tenders had been called in spite of the latest hiccup, which ‘Save Our Foreshore’, landowner Des Davey, the design team and Whitsunday Regional Council, will be meeting today to discuss.
“There’s quite deliberately a degree of flexibility in the way that the tender documents have gone out allowing for fine-tuning of the design during the construction process,” Mr Hunt said.
“The ideal outcome is to try to come up with a solution that satisfies the majority of people with the understanding that you can’t please everyone all of the time,” he said.
The current argument against a pronounced curve in the road comes from the proposed relocation of Mr Des Davey’s current supermarket block beside the Airlie Creek, pushing it towards the sea and onto what is effectively crown land. Mr Davey accepts there is no future for his block (in its current state) and therefore plans to redevelop, building a four-storey hotel.
“The kink (in the road) means I’ve got to go. Their (the design team’s) concept was to turn the block on its side but that doesn’t lend itself to a retail building – the end result was I would have to build a people-friendly restaurant/hotel,” Mr Davey said.
Save our Foreshore President Suzette Pelt says it is her understanding that “if just one person gets permission to build past the current building line, a precedent would be set”.
“There is a risk we would lose our foreshore. Public land is not negotiable. Once you lose it it’s gone forever” Ms Pelt said.
Several compromises have so far been suggested, one of which is for council to simply buy Mr Davey out, however Mayor Mike Brunker says this is not financially viable with no budget for any form of monetary compensation.
“The easiest thing for council to do would be to buy him (Des Davey) out, but we haven’t got the money. The people of Airlie Beach would be paying for it. People are already complaining about paying too high rates, yet we have other people saying, “buy him out – just borrow more”. It’s not like picking money off a money tree. We just can’t do that. Basically the more we can work in with Des, the less it’ll cost us,” Cr Brunker said.
“By him turning his building on its side he gets a like for like amount of land. To encourage/compensate him for dozing over his building and losing rent for so many years we’re giving him an opportunity to build a hotel on a location that suits him. This allows us to put the bend in the road, which is also to try and fix the flooding,” he said.
“To put this into perspective we’ve had 20 years of inaction and 40 reports done on the main street. Now after just 40 weeks of being in the job we’re calling tenders. Today we’re drawing a line in the sand and saying ‘this is a part of our bright prosperous future’,” Mayor Brunker said.
Mr Hunt said it was important now to work “closely with Save Our Foreshore, the Whitsunday Ratepayers Association, Des Davey and other stakeholders to explore other options that may present themselves.”
“There’s no doubt there is a willingness from all sides to find a solution,” he said.
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