Harbour Town Gold Coast: 20 years since shopping centre opened its doors
One of the Gold Coast’s most popular shopping centres is celebrating 20 years since it opened its doors. This is the story of how Harbour Town was built.
History
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IT’S been 20 years since Harbour Town Shopping Centre opened its doors to customers for the first time.
The Biggera Waters complex was the third and final major shopping centre added to the Gold Coast during the final decade of the 20th century.
Australia Fair opened to great fanfare in 1990 and grew steadily while Robina Town Centre’s arrival in 1996 heralded the start of a long-running battle for supremacy with Pacific Fair.
But in the final weeks of 1999, the $100 million Harbour Town finally launched more than 12 years after it was first proposed.
GOLD COAST SHOPPING CENTRES’ LONG HISTORY
The year was 1987 and the project was unveiled by Lewis Land Corporation with the backing of South Coast MP Russ Hinze.
The Local Government Minister, whose political career was derailed and ended just months later backed the development has something essential for the city’s north.
But it immediately attracted significant opposition from the Gold Coast City Council, local small business operators and even the Labor Opposition.
Shortly before leaving office as a result of the Fitzgerald Inquiry, Hinze announced around 80ha of rural land would be rezoned for retail purposes, bypassing the council’s planning regulations.
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This was approved by the National Party Government in mid-1989 and the issue became an election issue, with Labor that year campaigning on repealing the rezoning.
In 1990, then-deputy premier Tom Burns announced the rezoning would be dumped.
“Under this government there will be no Russell Hinze-style National Party rezonings,’’ he said.
But things heated up again in 1994 when Coles Myer wrote to then Gold Coast Mayor Gary Baildon, expressing opposition to any changes on the proposed development on the Harbour Town site.
At the time Council had rejected Lewis Land’s proposal to scale down the size of its original building plan and had told the company to resubmit its proposal.
Local Government Minister Terry Mackenroth eventually stepped in and introduced a midnight amendment allowing Lewis Land to make changes to its original plans without having to seek Gold Coast City Council approval.
Mr Mackenroth said this was not a Ministerial rezoning but “simply amended legislation to allow Lewis Land to develop the property in stages’’.
The project eventually was approved by the Planning and Environment Court and, after Westfield withdrew its appeal, Harbour Town was finally given the green light in 1997.
Construction began a year later and the first shoppers were served in late 1999.
At the time of its opening it was touted as the first purpose-built brand direct shopping centre in Australia.
And on opening day, things were suitably wild.
People climbed the walls and elbowed each other to get at the bargains on offer.
Management, traders and shoppers hailed the opening day as a success.
By 10am the shops were full and busloads of people on shopping tours began arriving.
The Sheridan linen store was among the most popular, with shoppers clambering over each other to get cheap towels.
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The queue to the cash register lined the perimeter of the store, there was a bottleneck at the entrance and extra stock had to be ordered three hours after the doors opened.
New Zealander Judy Glue was one of the first shoppers and spent several hundred dollars.
“I think this is fantastic and I’ve never seen anything as good so I’ve stocked up madly,” she said.
Carrara resident Natalie Mezgec also spent up a storm.
“I think I am going to get into trouble for spending all this money,” she said.
“I snuck in here and look what happened.”
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