Maroochydore CBD: Walker Corporation deal sparks long-awaited progress

The recent progress on the new Maroochydore city centre is a welcome sight but what will be heralded by council as a success was a hard lesson that could’ve been avoided.

It’s taken several years and almost $200m but finally we are seeing some progress in the new Maroochydore CBD.

It will no doubt be heralded as a success by the Sunshine Coast Council.

What it is in reality is a harsh lesson we didn’t need to learn.

Local councils are beginning to move well outside their fields of expertise.

Rates, roads and rubbish are no longer in vogue.

These days it’s all about event management and promotion, quasi-media outlet, small business incubators and now, apparently, playing developers.

But the lesson out of the new city centre is that the latter at the very least is a role that should never be taken on by local governments.

It was a fear myself and former colleagues harboured from the outset when we learnt the council and its self-owned development company SunCentral would play real-life Monopoly men and try to build a city.

What the public was sold was a vision which would take several decades to materialise.

What it got was almost $180m worth of ratepayer dollars poured into a 53ha former golf course site which lay effectively dormant for years.

Our concerns grew as land sales faltered and the skyline remained unchanged.

It became evident there was a very real risk the council would be forced to turn the once-visionary project into another cookie-cutter residential estate or take a bath on the project to stem the bleeding as public funds flowed into the project with little return.

Whether or not that is what happened remains to be seen – we don’t know the inner workings of the deal with Walker Corporation.

But what we do know is the decision to bring on the private sector experts has finally started to deliver tangible progress.

In the past fortnight Walker Corporation has lodged plans for its first office building and days later an application was lodged for an eight-storey private hospital and medical education facility partnering with the University of the Sunshine Coast.

Medical facilities and educational partnerships are exactly the sort of investment that should be targeted and brought into the city centre if the goal is to truly try and retain some our sharpest minds in the future.

It’s a shame it took this long for the council to grasp that it was well out of its depth trying to deliver a city and that sometimes things are best left to the experts.

I can’t help but think we would’ve been five years further advanced in its development and council’s coffers in a whole lot better shape had that been understood and the private sector tasked with its delivery from day one.

Let’s hope the progress now continues and we’re left with a fully-functioning CBD faster and viable opportunities for future generations.

Sunshine Coast Daily news editor