Construction plans for two new Mobil servos in Rocky

Both facilities have been council approved with sites on both sides of the Fitzroy River.

Rockhampton will see two new Mobil service stations, expected to be built next year

CONSTRUCTION plans have begun for a service station on the site of a caravan centre on Queen Elizabeth Drive.

The service station was council approved in October to be located at 12 Queen Elizabeth Dv, which is currently tenanted to Capricorn Caravan Centre and 36 Brown St, which has a highset house that would be removed.

The developer is RCI Group, a Sydney-based company which is also behind the Mobil service station recently approved to be built across from BP on Albert St in South Rockhampton.

Location of the service station on Queen Elizabeth Drive.

The facility will have eight fuel bowers, 10 onsite parking spaces and a retail shop which is to be located in the southern property boundary.

There will also be a water and air station and a dog wash.

New entry and exit access roads will be constructed.

“The fuel will be competitive, and the facilities will be world class,” RCI Group managing director Stephen Moore said.

“We can’t wait to get them open and start services.”

Lanksey Constructions recently sought tenders for architectural, preliminaries, services and structural trades with a budget of $1.5m to $2m.

Mr Moore said the company hoped to appoint a builder before Christmas and said construction would begin early next year, pending current lease arrangements.

Approved site plan of the service station.

RCI Group plans to run the construction of both service stations at the same time, starting within a week or two of each other.

Each service station would support more than 70 jobs during construction and will take three to four months to complete.

Once open, the stores would have around 10 staff each.

When asked why Rockhampton was chosen for two Mobil sites, Mr Moore said the company wanted to build a network and was also looking at opening a facility in Gladstone.

“We see it is a good strong regional town of Queensland,” he said.

“There is efficiency in doing more than one, with freight costs and things like that.

“Because they are both (the two service stations) different corridors and we could justify them.”

Capricorn Caravan Centre has tenanted the Queen Elizabeth Dr site for eight years and The Morning Bulletin understands its lease expires in May.

The business is looking for a site in Rockhampton to allow for expansion.

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