A few months after the Queensland government selected gambling operator Echo Entertainment as the preferred candidate for the redevelopment of the Brisbane Queen’s Wharf precinct, a group of architects expressed concerns about the city’s future. They also noted that Brisbane would get nothing from the multi-billion-dollar project.
Echo Entertainment together with its Hong Kong-based partner Chow Tai Fook Enterprises Ltd. is planning to completely redevelop the precinct, turning it into a luxury hotel, casino, and retail complex.
However, two prominent architects wrote a piece urging the state government to give a second thought to its decision to approve the proposed redevelopment plan. Richard Kirk, President of the Queensland branch of the Australia Institute of Architects and Catherin Bull, Landscape Architecture Professor at the University of Melbourne, compared the Brisbane project to Sydney’s Barangaroo one.
According to the two experts, Crown Resorts, which was selected as the preferred candidate for the redevelopment of the Barangaroo precinct, is to reconnect a defunct part of the city and to turn it into a public space. As for the Brisbane project, Echo Entertainment is to work on an already “established and intact” portion of the city.
The two architects wrote in their piece, which was distributed to local media, that they cannot understand in what way the public would benefit from the loss of that part of the city. Echo Entertainment’s integrated resort would spread over six blocks not far from Brisbane’s central part. The experts also noted that the area represents the city residents’ “shared history” and it would just be handed to be completely changed.
According to the architects, the redevelopment of the precinct is a huge and unnecessary risk at the same time. Instead, they proposed a development similar to the South Bank one – a sub-tropical park on the waterfront that ensured ever-lasting benefit to the public.
Commenting on the piece that criticized Echo Entertainment’s proposed plan for the Queen’s Wharf area, Anthony Lynham, who takes the position of Development Minister for Queensland, said that the project is a highly beneficial one and would completely “transform” one of Brisbane’s most tired sections.
Mr. Lynham also promised that the public would be informed about the benefits as well as other important aspects of the multi-billion-dollar proposal once the “project reaches contractual close”, which is expected to happen anytime soon.
