Veteran real estate agent Lucy Cole says the Gold Coast needs a push for arts and development

When asked how many Gold Coasters’ homes she’s been into, veteran real estate agent Lucy Cole reckons “most of them”. She believes a renewed push for arts and development could boost the city she knows so well.

Real estate agent Lucy Cole.

FOR Lucy Cole’s first years on the Gold Coast, from 1985, she ran three Chinese restaurants and the “Ling Ling” delivery service.

It’s a past life she says not many people would know about or remember because those customers “never saw a face”.

In the three decades since, while building her career in real estate, she has seen more faces than most.

As one of the first female auctioneers, first female REIQ branch chairs and founder of a group aimed at supporting women in real estate, Ms Cole has never done things by halves.

On New Year’s Day 2000, with two second-hand desks and a mobile phone, Ms Cole opened the first office of her agency.

She survived “radical” cancer in 1992, and now claims to have “a photographic memory of properties”.

“I have heaps of energy and every day it’s a blessing to be out there thinking, ‘what else can I do for the Coast to elevate it so that people can understand what a great place we have here?’,” she says.

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What do you love about the Gold Coast?

“I love the people of the Gold Coast, I think they’re young, progressive, entrepreneurial. They’ve all come from somewhere else and they’re willing to give it a go and they want to see progress. It’s just a vibrant place.”

What do you think could be done better on the Gold Coast?

Sitting for hours in crawling traffic should not be the dominant memory for people who visit the Coast to get away from their regular rat races, Ms Cole says.

“I think we need to get our transport into order,” she says.

“There’s just not enough thought being put into what’s going to happen once the light rail has been put in, what about all the other streets that have all been blocked up?

“The traffic congestion during peak times is unbelievable and we need to have better management of that. We’ve all come from somewhere where we’ve had bad traffic scenarios, and we don’t need that here.“

In your travels what have you seen working elsewhere that you think could work well on the Gold Coast?

It is time the Gold Coast grew some depth, by reviving and expanding our arts scene, according to Ms Cole.

“It has happened to many other international destinations, whereby a beautiful arts centre is established and then it becomes a destination, rather than just theme parks. That will elevate us to another level. If you go interstate, into Melbourne, that’s a cultural place. We want more theatres, we want more shows — we want to be the place that international visitors want to come to.

“We need to have a committee to push that along — I think on the Gold Coast people tend to sit back and wait for other people who are already involved in a lot of committees to always do that. I think they need to stand up and have a voice and be strong and not be frightened to say what they have to say to make things happen.”

If time, money, laws and approval were no issue, what’s one big idea you’d undertake today?

Ms Cole would go ahead and build something we’ve already heard plenty about — a cruise ship terminal. But she wouldn’t put it on the Spit, believing it would add to traffic troubles in Main Beach. Instead, a more northerly spot in the Broadwater, closer to Sovereign Islands, is where she’d set it up.

“It’s direct access, there are no bridges — it’s got the Sanctuary Cove connection with the superyachts.

“Those islands weren’t there years ago and they put them in quite successfully. It’s certainly a growth corridor up that way.

“I think the cruise ship terminal is vital to the Gold Coast. From the people that I speak to, the international people, we’ve been screaming for this to happen for such a long time. It needs to happen, it needs to be managed and it will make a difference,” she said.

“We’ve been in the doldrums for a long time because we’ve been a holiday destination, but we are a city, we’re a progressive city and we need to have good employment.

“I see it as being a luxury port, incorporating a shopping precinct and just a place for enjoyment.”

What conversations should the city’s movers and shakers be having?

“We need to make it attractive to live on the Gold Coast by keeping our rates under control, our water rates under control, to make it an affordable place.

“We don’t want to price ourselves out of the market like they have in other states, where people have had to move on because they can’t afford to live there anymore.

“We want people to come here, to live here, to enjoy their retirement or working life.

“When people come to holiday, they want to come back and live here, they want what we’re experiencing.”