Few cars are using the costly new car park at Rocklea Markets

THIS Brisbane institution opened a swank new multi-level car park earlier this year - but questions are now being asked about whether shareholders’ are getting value for money from the $12m investment.

Brisbane Markets chief executive Andrew Young. Photo AAP/Megan Slade

FREE PARKING

BRISBANE Markets opened a swank new $12 million multi-level carpark at its Rocklea site earlier this year for traders and customers.

But questions are now being asked about whether that hefty investment was value for money. A series of photos of the facility has been sent in by a City Beat spy that appears to show the facility, which can accommodate more than 500 vehicles, largely unused even during peak trading periods. Photos taken at 4am and 8am – the peak period for the market – show a few vehicles on the top level but the remaining sections substantially empty.

“The business day is really over by 10am at the market so these are the peak times,” our Rocklea spy tells us. “Brisbane Markets has spent $12 million of shareholders’ money building a multi-level carpark that no body uses.”

Brisbane Markets chief executive Andrew Young has defended the project, noting that the top two floors of the multi-level car park are reserved for tenants and have a utilisation rate of more than 60 per cent.

The bottom two levels are used for casual parking with use expected to increase over time as more of the existing on-ground car parking areas are used for new warehouses.

“As the site continues to grow, it makes no sense to lock up large areas of land as open on-ground car parks,” Young says. Already a pre-existing on-ground car parking area has been removed to provide the site of the new $17.5 million Montague warehouse expected to be completed in April next year.

 

OUT OF TOWNERS

FOR a supposedly proudly Queensland-based organisation, Suncorp’s board doesn’t have too many banana benders in its ranks.

Suncorp chief executive and managing director Michael Cameron. Picture: AAP/Dean Lewins

Yesterday, Suncorp announced the appointment of Sydneysider Ian Hammond as a non-executive director, swelling the number of directors residing south of the border. City Beat counts only chief executive Michael Cameron and director Doug McTaggart as board members who are Queensland residents. It’s hard to fathom how Suncorp cannot find talented people in a state of five million people. And that’s not parochialism, just common sense that perhaps local people are best placed to serve a local financial group. We’re not a bunch of cane toad smoking hillbillies anymore, ay?

 

GOOD DROP

BRISBANE social enterprise The Good Beer Co has some good news for fans of its Great Barrier Beer. The company, founded by James Grugeon, will launch a rebranded version of

Great Barrier Beer and Good Beer Co chief James Grugeon.

Great Barrier Beer in cans, as opposed to just bottles, tonight to raise funds for the Australian Marine Conservation Society (AMCS). Grugeon tells us the lager will be brewed with all Australian ingredients by award-winning Brisbane independent craft brewery Ballistic Beer Company. Ten per cent of the price of every keg and carton sold will go directly to the AMCS to help fund their work to protect the reef.

FLYING WHEELS

HOW autonomous flying vehicles, artificial intelligence and robots will change the face of the cities of the future will be the topic of discussion at a Brisbane conference next month. The inaugural Urban Motion conference will feature some of the world’s leading experts in the field from China, the US, Canada and Europe.

Urban Motion conference chair Marcus Ng says a lot of smart living advancements are happening in Brisbane including Australia’s first and only flying car project – the Pegasus Flying Car project being undertaken by NXG3N in association with MTAiQ – the automotive innovation hub within the Motor Trades Association of Queensland. The conference will be held at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre on November 19-20.