Push for progress report on Scarness Caravan Park redevelopment

Beachfront businesses owners have joined councillors in calling for an urgent progress report on the redevelopment of an Esplanade tourist park amid claims delays are taking “far, far too long”.

Two years after the Scarness Caravan Park was closed for “redevelopment”, a sod has yet to be turned on its new fittings and buildings.

While part of the park has been available to RV travellers at a discounted rate (there’s no power or water) since September, 2020, it remains largely empty and unable to accommodate holidaying families and campers who would ordinarily frequent the Esplanade businesses opposite.

Large sections of the park were demolished in 2020.

Serious concerns about the seemingly stagnant project were flagged at a recent council meeting where Fraser Coast Councillor David Lee called for a progress report on the redevelopment which he said needed to be “prioritised as a matter of urgency”.

Mr Lee said he was “very concerned about the number local businesses that are already doing it hard with Covid and they look across the road at a vacant site”.

Among those businesses is the Scarness Foodworks where owners David and Angela Baker have noted a significant decline in customers.

Mrs Baker told the Fraser Coast Chronicle takings were down roughly 40-60% over Christmas and she was disheartened nothing will have changed in time for the Easter break.

Scarness Foodworks owners Angela and David Baker. Photo: Tim Wessling

She said families didn’t stay at the park at the moment because they needed power, and her supermarket relied on regular caravan park shoppers and parents who sent their children over to buy an ice-cream.

She still has the original brochures of the plans the council put out for the caravan park “years ago” and simply wants the council to do “what they promised to do”.

“We sit here and look at it every day and here’s this beautiful, big green site – empty,” Ms Baker said.

“It’s very depressing to look at.

“Get the new park fully operational … fully operational is what we need”.

Mr Lee, who wants to see a sod turned “this year”, said he had put forward the motion for a progress report as the redevelopment had taken “far, far too long” and these delays were causing the council “reputational damage”.

Councillor David Lee outside the Scarness caravan park at the time it was closed for redevelopment.

Councillor Denis Chapman agreed, telling the meeting he had “made the mistake” of wearing his council badge while on a recent trip to pick up pizza from a Scarness business and was stopped by someone who said “when are you going to open this across the road? I thought it was only going to be closed for a short period of time?”

The motion was seconded by Councillor Phil Truscott who said even in his division on the other side of Maryborough he was being regularly asked about what was happening with the park.

Councillors voted unanimously to support the call for a progress report which will be tabled at the March meeting.