Panellists at this week’s Future Townsville expressed frustration over the stagnant pace of development around Flinders St, and raised some interesting ideas when questioned about what could be done.

Port of Townsville chair Anne Sherry said it was obvious it was “hard to get around other than on a (Neuron) scooter” between the “bits” of Townsville that were nice.

“The question is how do we fill the gaps in the streets?” Ms Sherry said.

“How do you get a walkway that people want to use? How do you connect the ferry to what’s happening in the centre of the city?”

Thanks to the presence of Ross Creek, it is possible for little ‘city cat’-type ferries to run between The Strand, The Ville, and the stadium.

Also speaking at the event was city planning expert Kate Meyrick from Urbis, who said shade and public transport were big problems for Townsville.

“It’s not good enough to say ‘it’s hot, it’s tropical, you can’t walk here’,” Dr Meyrick said.

Dr Meyrick said Townsville was “woeful” when it came to walkability, which negatively impacted the city’s ‘liveability’.

“I want you to focus around the water,” Dr Meyrick said.

“And I want you to build a more compact central Townsville that is actually walkable and shaded, that is enjoyable to be in.”

The panel were asked by Townsville Bulletin editor Jill Poulsen to name “one thing they’d do to improve liveability” in the city.

Ms Sherry said Townsville “needs a precinct”.

“It needs a piece of the city with soul and energy that is working, as opposed to a bit here, a bit there. At the moment we have bits … and ideally this precinct would follow the water.”

Former Northern Territory chief minister and current Hancock Agriculture CEO Adam Giles said the area between the stadium and the casino needed to be activated – and if Townsville seriously wanted to fix tourism and liveability, it needed to fix crime first.

“As a former tourism minister in charge of things like Uluru and Kakadu, I don’t know how well tourism is when I drive out of the (Townsville) airport and I go past a rehabilitation centre on my right, and a juvenile jail on my left,” he said.

Mr Giles said Townsville needed to wean itself off expecting taxpayers to prop up the city’s developments – especially if the city also expected the same state government to be funding crime intervention.

“If you want to encourage a 30-storey hotel hypothetically you could put an incentive in where government will provide a bit of port land or remove payroll tax,” he said.

“It’s about vision and leadership, it’s not just about taxpayers paying for it all.”

The Port of Townsville is the “landlord” for a lot of the Flinders St land – including the desolate aquarium site – and Ms Sherry said the Port has been working on a “masterplan” for a long time with Townsville City Council and others.

However, these masterplans rarely see the light of day.

Ms Sherry said she’s only been the Port chair for three years and she’s already seen “three versions” of a city development plan.

“I watch people come and go, and every time someone comes the whole thing seems to go back to ground zero. And that’s an issue,” she said.

“We’re going to have all this amazing attention on us with the Olympics, and people will come and will watch us … what do we want them to see?”

Brazier Motti senior principal Stephen Motti said Townsvillians did need to get more proactive for their city.

“I’ve seen 36 plans, all suggesting where Townsville should be … but they are left to sit on the bench,” Mr Motti said.

“In the last 10 years alone we’ve had five different chairs, five different CEOs, and inevitably it’s destructive.”

You can watch the entire Future Townsville event on the livestream here.