Polly Seidler slams GPT Group over development plans for the Riverside Centre precinct

The daughter of renowned architect Harry Seidler has fired another broadside at the owners of an iconic Brisbane building over their plans to build a 26-storey tower next door.

The daughter of renowned architect Harry Seidler has fired a second broadside at the owners of the Riverside Centre precinct over plans to build a tower next to the iconic building in the Brisbane CBD.

Polly Seidler has made a submission to the Brisbane City Council claiming “provable false and deceptive claims” over the GPT Group’s development application to build a 26-storey tower on the site of which currently houses the Pig N’ Whistle pub on Eagle St.

In March, Seidler, whose father died in 2006, applied for the Riverside Centre precinct to enter the Queensland Heritage Register as a State Heritage Place.

Riverside Centre in the Brisbane CBD.

Now she has taken aim at GPT over its claims that the amended DA was in line with her father’s original masterplan for the site.

Importantly, the original plan had a five or six-storey building in the pub site – not a “smaller scale” tower as claimed by GPT.

As well as the submission, Seidler, a part-time inhouse lawyer, has contacted the Brisbane City Council calling on them to pursue GPT and the architects with a civil penalty order for making provable false and deceptive claims under section 226 of the Planning Act.

A council spokesman confirmed it has received the letter and was “taking the allegations made very seriously”.

“This has been immediately raised with the applicant who has been asked to promptly respond to the allegations,” a spokesman said.

The precinct was designed by renowed architect Harry Seidler and this image shows later reversible 2018 non-Seidler stools and non-Seidler angular landscaping.

Seidler says she has all father’s plans and pictures to prove her case.

“Its all on the public record when the building was designed, all the model photographs, designs, newspaper articles and filmed lectures. It’s not something that you can’t prove what his intentions were,” she told Citybeat.

When contacted by Citybeat the GPT Group confirmed it has received a copy of Seidler’s submission regarding the development application.

“We will engage with Council about the contents of the submission,” they say.

“We are continuing to progress the development application and are confident the proposed scheme presents an exciting opportunity to modernise and activate both public space and access to the Brisbane River and enhance the entertainment and dining opportunities for the precinct.”

Woke up

Sentinel Property Group executive Michael ‘The Professor’ Sherlock still has bakeries in his blood as the co-founder and former CEO of Brumby’s.

Easter time buns for sale.

Despite having sold the bakery franchise business to Retail Food Group in 2007, Sherlock keeps his eagle eye on the industry particularly around Easter when bakeries are typically booming from the sale of hot cross buns on ‘bun Thursday’ – the day before Good Friday.

But Sherlock was aghast when he found a local bakery in Brisbane’s inner west had decided to remove the ‘hot cross’ from its buns and label them ‘Easter Time buns’.

“This is just another case of woke madness removing the name hot cross buns,” he says.

“This wouldn’t have happened in my time at Brumby’s. You can’t have Easter without hot cross buns. They’ve been synonymous with Easter celebrations since the 12th century in England.”

Sherlock, Sentinel’s chief experience officer, says the Group’s CEO Warren Ebert and the Sentinel staff will be celebrating their Easter morning tea in the Brisbane CBD office on Thursday with many hot cross buns.