Breakthrough on Dockside marina eviction, flotilla protest on hold

A commission set up last year to help businesses hit by Covid will hold crisis talks to head off the eviction of 22 boat operators from a Brisbane marina. It comes as dramatic video has emerged.

A commission set up last year to help businesses hit by Covid will hold crisis talks to head off the eviction of 22 boat operators from a Brisbane marina.

If the eviction goes ahead, businesses such as Brisvegas Cruises, Aquarius Charters, GoBoat, Prawnster and JetSki Brisbane say they will have nowhere else to tie up and face closure.

Up to 300 jobs would be lost if that happened, sparking Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner yesterday to label the mess “bureaucracy gone bonkers’’.

The Queensland Small Business Commission is trying to broker talks with Dockside marina manager Ken Allsop, the Department of Resources (DoR) and operators on a way forward.

It has also agreed to work with DoR to try to change the seabed lease to allow at least some operators to stay.

Opposition Natural Resources spokesman, Pat Weir, queried whether the Commissioner’s intervention was a smokescreen and said time was fast running out for operators who had until March 4 to leave Dockside.

The Dockside marina.

Prawnster owner Martin Brennan said he had been contacted by the commisison but was “not holding his breath’’.

“We don’t need more time (to leave), we need a solution,’’ he said.

“(DNRM Minister) Stewart Scott and his department should be deeply embarrassed.’’

But furious commercial boat operators at the Kangaroo Point marina said they would hold off on a protest flotilla until the commission did its work.

Brisvegas owner Barrie Coonan said a group of boat operators had planned a floating blockade to stop CityCats docking at ferry terminals, but only as a last ditch tactic.

Mr Coonan also today admitted to being the person filmed kicking over bollards installed across a marina easement.

The Dockside CCTV footage was posted on a local Facebook page last night.

He apologised for his actions, last year, and said he faced court and was fined but had acted out of frustration.

“The Dockside body corporate put up those bollards to stop us using a golf cart (to resupply our boats) and take away rubbish,’’ he said.

“I was angry because I saw an elderly man, aged 89, who got stuck in his mobility scooter because of the bollards. He was in tears.’’

Barrie Coonan said he acted out of frustration last year when he kicked down bollards installed across the Dockside marina easement.

Dockside Hotel resident Tony Di Vincenzo, who moved into the precinct last year and has a disabled son, claimed the bollards — now replaced by two rows of bollards concreted into the boardwalk — did not meet disability access standards.

He said the installation of the two sets of bollards did not appear to have gone to a vote of unit owners.

Marina owner Ken Allsop meanwhile pleaded with DoR to be given more time, preferably about nine months, to allow the commercial operators to find alternative moorings.

He said claims about noise, garbage smells and other problems with the marina were incorrect and the Dockside body corporates were using that as a smokescreen to evict them.

Brisvegas owner Barrie Coonan (left) met with Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner at City Hall on Thursday morning to discuss the concerns of commercial operators. Cr Schrinner slammed the Government’s eviction notice as “bureaucracy gone bonkers’’ and a travesty for a “river city’’.

“The grumpy old men here in the body corporates … (have) written letters and letters and letters to every government department,” he told 4BC radio this morning.

“They’ve even hired PR companies to go and find whatever they can … and get the PR companies to send in reports that we make a lot of noise, we do this, we do that.

“They have a template letter up on their website.

“We’ve been trying and trying to get these changes, they’ve just ignored us because of these letters.”

Mr Allsop said he first approached DoR more than two years ago to change the seabed lease, set up 30 years ago.

The lease prohibited commercial operators from using it, despite some being there for two decades with no problems.

Sam Brennan (left) and Chris Dougherty from Prawnster. Complaints from Dockside body corporates started after Prawnster, GoBoat and some other oeprators moved to the marina, but they say the complaints are baseless. Picture: Nigel Hallett

He said he had got the “go slow’’ from bureaucrats and had to engage solicitors, but to no avail.

Mr Coonan said the trouble escalated in recent years when floating seafood outlet Prawnster, GoBoat, JetSki Brisbane and some others took up subleases.

“Before then there was no activity at the marina — we would even float down the river if we had to do (noisy) repairs on board, or if the jazz band was doing sound checks before we headed out (on a cruise),’’ he said.

“Those new businesses are not a problem, they should be allowed to be there, but they have been used as an excuse.’’

Mr Coonan said the marina’s liquor license allowed trading only until 9pm, but the liquor licence over a riverfront lawn owned by the Dockside body corporates was much more extensive even than that at South Bank.

It allowed trading, including live bands and markets, up to midnight seven days a week.

An aerial view of Dockside marina, where 300 jobs are at risk after 22 commercial operators were told to leave by March 4.

Mr Di Vincenzo said the precinct also originally had a Comedy Club, the Captain’s Cove and other hospitality businesses and was “buzzing’’ in its heyday.

He said it was ironic the body corporates had approached commercial operators to tie up at an adjacent dry dock they owned.

DoR said in a response on Thursday (February 17) that it acted after numerous complaints about noise and other issues, and because the lease excluded commercial operators.

The body corporate at Stradbroke Tower and Villas, one of the seven highrises making up the precinct, was approached for comment.

However, one Dockside resident posted on a local community Facebook group that the bollards were erected by the Dockside Precinct Management Committee to stop the marina and vessel operators using motorised transport to haul garbage, equipment and supplies through precinct common property.

JetSki Brisbane has been told to leave.

“These people, who are motivated entirely out of self-interest, then try and manipulate the narrative to con others into believing they are the poor, much-maligned victims in this piece,’’ he posted.

He claimed motorised transport was illegal along the easement and any accidents posed a public liability risk to the body corporates.

The dispute has split the local community and sparked a change.org petition which so far has 700 signatures.