Son of North Bank

Dear Project Manager

I think the state government has some kind of hearing problem. Which part of 'don't build over the river' did you have difficulty understanding? Just stop it. Building over the river is UNACCEPTABLE in any way shape or form. I don't really care that the new design 'only' defaces one quarter of the river as opposed to the one third it used to.

What is it with this seemingly monomaniacal, crazed desire to destroy the river and build high rises on it? This is the same design as before, slightly watered down. It's been put to the same 'public comment' as last time, remember, the one where the premier fraudulently claimed most of the responses were positive? No doubt we'll be told the same thing again, that everyone loves it, and it'll be as much a lie as last time.

Also stop the rubbish about 'no taxpayer money' being spent. Multiplex is getting to make a great deal of money out of vandalising what should be public property. It's an insult to even imply that the taxpayer is being done a favour by having their assets exploited for someone else's profit.

What is a "signature building bridging the Elizabeth Street off ramps and retaining and framing the view along Elizabeth Street to the river, while addressing the surrounding heritage buildings."? Is this a nice way to say, 'a giant skyscraper of as many floors as we bloody well like that will dwarf the heritage buildings near it and plunge the surrounding area into darkness?' Yes, yes it is. Ironic that it's going to be the "Birthplace of Brisbane" because by the look of things the North Bank is going to be screwed hard.

I suppose the rest of us mugs will just have to console ourselves with kicking the current government out at the next election.

Yours in chagrin

The public consultation link is well hidden over here. Go ahead and have your say, they'll probably lie about it, again. Also I'd better not see another deafening silence from the Greens on this issue otherwise they can go get stuffed next election if they want me to hand out HTVs.

New North Bank: Dear public, this one's slightly less worse

The Bligh government just don't get it, do they? Don't build on our fucking river! Don't whore it out to developers. Is that too much to ask?

Here's the comment I left on the Brisbane Times' 'Your Say' page regarding the 'new' (i.e. slightly pared-down) design for Brisbane's North Bank. Needless to say, they didn't post it (the Courier Mail would have- they'll publish almost anything!):

New North Bank! Now with less corruption!

No no no no no. 'Reduced footprint' my *rse. So they've reduced it by 20m and it now 'only' covers 50m, or roughly one quarter of the river, compared with 70m (or one third) in the previous design. They needed to scrap the requirement that no taxpayers' money is to be spent on the project. That's what made it such a massive rort in the first place, hence the proposal for 30-storey buildings. How does the public benefit from a 30-storey building plonked right on the riverfront (if not on top of the river, again)? It doesn't. Wake up, Anna Bligh. You were happy enough to spend $63 million of our money on the vanity project that is the Tank St Bridge- why not North Bank?

Skinner Smackdown: The man versus The Man

Would make a great used car salesman: Anna Bligh.

Anna Bligh has done her best to rig the upcoming 'Enquiry by Design' process for the Multiplex monstrosity at North Bank, but UQ architecture academic Associate Professor Peter Skinner is having none of it: his submission to the 'Enquiry' starts with 1. Sack Multiplex as preferred developer. Let's have a round of applause for that. Associate Professor Skinner has some rather good alternative ideas for the site, which you can read if you download the PDF. I've cherry-picked some of the best bits- Skinner's submission is a total smackdown of Multiplex and Anna Bligh's not-at-all-corrupt government:

1. Sack Multiplex as preferred developer. They submitted a ‘binding tender’ proposal that proved unacceptable to 57% of respondents in public consultation. They were allowed to revise their binding tender and were given the ‘green light’ without the promised proper public consultation. Their design and the claim that the scheme would ‘allow the Brisbane river to flow unimpeded as it does now’ has always been preposterous impossible and wrong. The Enquiry by Design process should not be seen to allow Multiplex an opportunity to further amend their ‘binding tender’ - a third bite of the tender cherry.

2. Eliminate car parking from the site. Rather than introduce 1700 cars to service private buildings plus additional car parking for the public as Multiplex propose, we should aim to eliminate all but the most essential vehicular intrusion onto the site.

1700 cars?! What moron came up with that idea, and what moron approved it? Oh wait, we already know the answer to those two questions...

3. Tear down the chainmesh and barbed wire. One of the greatest impediments to public access to the river is the ‘security’ fencing around government car park sites. The Government’s Guantanamo Bay landscape strategy is an offence against good taste, but more importantly a highly dangerous environment for users of this area. It violates basic CPTED principles.

14. Respect the history of the area. Include Turrbal and Jagera engagement in the Enquiry by design process. Respect the fact that over 184 years the area between William Street and the River has grown as the state’s administrative, executive and symbolic precinct, proudly visible to all on approach to the city. The relatively recent decision to allow gambling interests to infest the Treasury and Lands Administration buildings was very unfortunate, but thankfully is not irreversible in time. The Precinct as a whole needs protective legislation to protect it from this sort of mercenary assault in the future.

Finally, I had to include the whole of point 15. Peter Skinner also bags Anna Bligh's moronic Tank Street Bridge project and uses it to ask why, if not spending taxpayers' money on infrastructure projects is the ultimate goal, she was able to come up with $65 million of taxpayers' money for a completely superfluous pedestrian bridge. Why? Maybe whichever developer is building the Tank St Bridge also made convenient 'donations' to Labor. It's increasingly hard to tell whether Anna Bligh is corrupt, incompetent or stupid, or possibly all three. Who else would allow such wanton pillaging of Brisbane after all the mistakes that have been made with regard to 'development' in the past? I will *not* be voting for or preferencing Labor at the next state election. Not a chance. Sorry, Ronan Lee. It's obviously time Queensland had a Spring clean.

15. No net cost to taxpayers. What a malign and mean mantra this has turned out to be.
No other street or footpath in the CBD is expected to run at a profit, let alone generate three million dollars per lineal metre. The ‘no-cost’ motto if applied is a shirking of responsibility for civic planning and a gross insult to past generations who have poured their resources, noble ambitions, and hard work into the magnificent buildings of the city. If the Government is not investing any funds in the project, it has no incentive or mechanism to rein back the private partner from excess and folly. As for the developer, the bigger and more expensive the project, the more they stand to gain. This is a sure-fire recipe for disaster. It would appear that $65 million can be found for a seemingly redundant and frivolous pedestrian bridge at Tank Street, yet it is claimed there isn’t sixpence of taxpayers money to be spent on the most fundamental provision of safety and amenity for the users of Brisbane’s City Cats and visitors to our city.

The net cost to taxpayers must surely be measured as the expenditure minus the benefit. Calculated properly the Multiplex scheme has a huge and ongoing cost to Queenslanders, starting with the loss of their river and ending with an increased risk of loss of property and life. By contrast, the proposal outlined here involves relatively miniscule expenditure and should return handsome benefits, starting with improved safety and accessibility, working through a more attractive welcome to the tourism market and ending with a redemption of pride in the achievements of Queenslanders over our ancient and recent history.

Implementing the fourteen ideas above would fulfil all of the aims and provisions of the North Bank Strategic Plan in a way that the Multiplex scheme patently doesn’t and can’t. There is nothing outrageously expensive in these proposals and by obviating the need to drive piles into the river and erect high-rise towers over the water and park thousands of unneeded cars, it will of course cost only a tiny fraction of Multiplex’s bloated budget.

It can't be worse than Anna's...

Sir Llew Edwards, the former chairman of Expo '88, has said that the design for the revamping of North Bank should be put to an international competition. With some obvious caveats, such as NO ONE IS ALLOWED TO BUILD OVER THE FUCKING RIVER, it's hard to see how this could be worse than the current plan. Which, thankfully, has been shelved for the time being. But with Multiplex having paid their dues, I would expect that they'll get their way sooner or later.

"Get up Brendan! Get up I say!"

If you haven't signed the National Trust petition to stop Anna Bligh's North Bank development, get over there now and do it. Or we'll post bits of Peter Costello's autobiography, unedited. And not the unintentionally funny bits either. Just the desperately sad ones, the fermented juices of his crushed ambition, matured in a leather chair into a fine, bitter wine over ten years.




[graphic pinched from http://birdhouse.org/ probably soon to be the subject of a hotlinking prank...]

Bligh government accepted Multiplex donations

I knew it. Why else would a government give the go-ahead to a plan for developing North Bank that was obviously such a stinker of an idea that they must have known it even before it was universally condemned by planning experts, architects and the public alike?

The Queensland Opposition has accused the Labor Party of accepting tens of thousands of dollars in donations from construction companies, at the same time as the Government was deciding whether to award them contracts.

Electoral returns show Multiplex donated more than $11,000 in the days before it lodged a tender for Brisbane's controversial North Bank development.

Of course there's nothing illegal about the Bligh government taking money from Multiplex while its tender for the development was under consideration. For that there would have to be a piece of paper saying "Dear Multiplex, thanks for the money. Now that payment has been received we will approve your tender". And that pretty much never happens. Instead, we have an 'understanding' between the developers and the government that this is how things work. It's fucking crooked. Anna Bligh was ready to shit all over Brisbane thanks to this cosy relationship with Multiplex, against all the best advice. The people of Brisbane should feel used.

And in other news, the Brisbane City Council has finally come out against the development. What took them so bloody long? The plans have been on the table for more than a year now.

Security guard decries South Bank bashings

Paradise... for bogan yobs and teenage crims.

The idiotic few who are in favour of the proposed development of North Bank by Multiplex frequently cite South Bank as an example of making the 'perceived' scariness of North Bank into a pleasant and safe place to roam at night.

Given that almost every week a mugging or assault at South Bank seems to hit the news, I don't find it such a convincing argument. Unless Anna Bligh and the rest of the Multiplex cheer squad think that the North Bank development will have the effect of spreading the crims thinner rather than just giving them another place to hang out?

Former South Bank Security Guard Rob Hayward spoke to the Courier Mail:

"Violence at South Bank is a very common thing," he said.

"The police would be called to an incident at least five days a week."

Mr Hayward said that outnumbered security guards struggled to deal with incidents at the parklands, with only two rostered on most nights.

"We ask for more staff every year but they say no."

"And then when it gets really bad they'll put another guard on for a couple of weeks until things settle down again, and then they'll take that guard away and the problem just comes back.

"When you've only got one or two guards to handle these things it will never be a safe place to be.

"In the past 18 months there's been at least two assaults on guards every month.

"I've had a broken eye socket and been assaulted a number of times."

New anti-development petition for Northbank Multiplex plan

Someone on Facebook sent us a link to a petition against the Multiplex North Bank development being run by National Trust Queensland. With over 400 signatures it's more successful than our previous crappy internet petition effort, so we urge anyone who doesn't want the North Bank Multiplex monstrosity to go ahead to sign the petition here.

Petition closes on the 9th of May, so get in and put your signature there NOW :)

Peter Skinner on the North Bank monstrosity

Kiss the view of the historic buildings goodbye...

One of our commenters referred us to the following article on the North Bank development by Peter Skinner on the website of the Brisbane Institute. While I can't claim to necessarily support the institute's views on everything I can affirm that the views espoused in Skinner's article are very much in line with my own.

You can be forgiven for missing the low-key announcement, but in November 2007 Queensland Premier Anna Bligh ‘gave the green light’ to a private property developer for a redevelopment of North Bank. The project involves building $1.7 billion worth of office and apartment buildings in the Brisbane River, in front of the CBD. Five speculative towers, 50 to 60 metres long and 19 to 46 stories high, are to be built in a line alongside the Riverside Expressway, blocking current views over the river valley to the mountains. Another row of four apartment buildings, of 8 to 11 storeys, will extend even further across the river.

The historic William Street precinct currently seen from South Bank will be almost entirely concealed by this wall of developer architecture. To support their nine buildings, Multiplex will need to build a huge concrete platform, extending out more than 80 metres from the river’s edge, and covering 4.13 hectares (10 acres) of the river. This plinth of 100 house lots extends more than 30 per cent of the way to the opposite shore. Rather than being on the ‘bank’ of the river, the new walkway lies closer to the centre of the river.

Why has this happened? Why has Multiplex been allowed to treat our river as vacant real estate? The State government has vigorously championed Multiplex’s proposal, but where is the public benefit?

I did take issue with Skinner's characterisation of the area around the QUT CityCat stop as a 'mugger's alley', but I don't take issue with any proposal to alter or improve the area- just with the potential for destruction of the mangroves and the obliteration of an area of river 4.3 hectares in size.

Skinner also takes the time to outline the neglect of the North Bank precinct by both the Labor state government and the Brisbane City Council. The city's failure to provide reasonable disabled access is rather a travesty, as I'm sure anyone who has struggled with a pram down the flight of stairs near the ramp will attest. I doubt anyone has struggled with a wheelchair or the like on those stairs and lived to tell the tale, but I have no doubt there would be a few who've missed their CityCat or ferry thanks to the long detour down the hill that constitutes disabled 'access' to the terminal.

What's odd about the whole North Bank development thing is that the media coverage has been so slight you can practically hear crickets chirping; there isn't so much of a peep out of either of the major parties in the city council, and the Bligh government seems determined to go ahead with this travesty despite basically every person qualified enough to make expert commentary and a huge proportion of the public being against it (unless we count the rigged 'public consultation' carried out by Bligh soon after the North Bank proposal was announced).

Planning experts condemn Northbank development

Anna Bligh's Queensland state government is either corrupt or stupid. How else can it continue to fly in the face of overwhelming expert reasoning and public opinion against the Northbank development project?

Queensland's peak body of town planners, a major group of architects, and an award-winning Queensland University lecturer are among critics of construction giant Multiplex's proposed North Bank development, which was announced by Premier Anna Bligh last month.

Their main objection is that North Bank, to be situated on the northern bank of the Brisbane River alongside the city's central business district, involves the construction of a giant concrete pad that would extend more than 70m into the river at a point where it is only 260m wide.

[...]

Queensland University architecture lecturer Peter Skinner said the Government had not accurately portrayed the scheme during the consultation, and this had compromised the integrity of the project.

Associate Professor Skinner questioned Ms Bligh's claim that because 90per cent of the people who had made submissions had wanted "something done", there was strong public support for the Multiplex proposal. "I meet widely with architects and planners in this city and am yet to find a single design professional, independent of the project, who sees merit in the Multiplex scheme," he said.

"Equally telling is the number of older citizens who have approached me unprompted, absolutely outraged by the very concept of allowing buildings in the river

I think the concept of building over the river, obliterating a large section of it, is something that is beyond the grasp of most peoples' imagination. Even I struggle to wrap my head around a visualisation of what the Multiplex monstrosity will do to our river.

I'm pretty sure I've made this suggestion before- Anna Bligh should come clean with the public and have the section of the river that will be destroyed by the Multiplex development marked out with fluorescent buoys so that people can see what they'll be losing. Maybe place a large, floating sign over that area of the water's surface, announcing Multiplex's plans.

And where is our dear retarded monkey-in-chief, Lord Mayor Campbell Newman in all this? He's fond of folly on a massive scale- the man's tunnel obsession is enough evidence of that- but surely having Multiplex take a dump on the most scenic part of the Brisbane CBD should be enough to get him riled? Given that I haven't heard so much as a peep from Campbell Newman on Northbank I suppose it's safe to assume Multiplex have weaseled their way into his favour too.

I wonder how Multiplex possibly managed to pull this off? Not with the brilliance of their development plan, that's for sure.

Ka-ching!

Stop the North Bank Development

Apparently the North Bank Hole is going ahead. After Anna Bligh's fraudulent 'public consultation', Multiplex have graciously changed the design from 7 sky scrapers to six, but they're all going to be taller. It's still going to be built out into the river and the mangroves will be gone. All that to make Brisbane into a poor man's Sydney. It pisses me off no end. If you're a wanker fleeing Sydney and you don't think Brisbane is 'cosmopolitan' enough, drop me an email and I'll happily charge you $40 for a bowl of croûtons and then mug you afterwards. Or better yet, you can piss off back to where you used to live and leave the rest of us to live quite happily in one of the most beautiful cities in the world. It's funny to see what Sydneysiders think of Brisbane from down there:

The black bag contains a Brisbane visitors' guide, which I peruse during my 90-minute Virgin Blue flight to work out what I'm going to do after I get off the plane. A few hours after discarding my cold-weather gear and setting off with my possessions wrapped in a red hankie tied to a stick, I'm cruising up the Brisbane River aboard the MV Neptune.

Developers in Brisbane have made a token effort to build skyscrapers - and very shiny and modern they look too - but then they seem to have decided that's all a bit hard and have instead concentrated on turning old wool stores and warehouses into riverfront apartment blocks.

As a result, unlike in Sydney, most of Brisbane's old buildings are still visible. And from the pedestrian Goodwill Bridge you can actually see green hills.

A dolphin follows us up the river for a while; pelicans and the odd classic Queensland pub with ornate balconies makes it feel more Porpoise Spit than urban jungle, and that's all right with me.

SMH

Beats the hell out of "Come see Brisbane, it's like Sydney only worse."

The Multiplex proposal will involve six high-rise buildings on a giant
concrete platform extending 70m into the Brisbane River directly beside the Victoria Bridge in the middle of the city and extending about 800m along the river.

The highest of the buildings will be 46 storeys, but Queensland Premier Anna Bligh said there would be plenty of open space plus an Olympic-size swimming pool for public access.

Work on the project will start next year and it will proceed in three
stages, with the first being ready by 2011 and the entire project being finished by 2019.

Queensland University architecture lecturer Peter Skinner questioned whether the proposed development took into account future water flows in the Brisbane River.

"We live in an era of climate change, so while most climatologists say the east coast of Australia will be drier, they also say that there will be more extreme weather events, such as floods," he said. "The 1974 flood went up to nearly the level of the southeast freeway, and if that happens again, then all that site would go underwater."

Cedar Grove View

Not content to sit around and watch a bunch of politicians, posers and greedy developers run amok, we've created a petition. Please sign it, a significant number of our readers are from Brisbane, so get cracking (even if you're not a resident of the best city on earth). If the proposal thrills you to bits, fair play to you. If not, well you don't even have to leave your comfy chair. The petition asks for an email address, this is so we don't get accused of astroturfing the petition, like Anna Bligh's 'consultation'. So don't be paranoid. Also, it would be nice if you pestered your friends to sign it too.

A walk through North Bank

Some church in Dutton Park or Annerley... wasn't really paying attention to the location!

Gam and I took a walk today to buy coffee from the Oxfam store in the city. We went over the Eleanor Schonell bridge (which I still keep wanting to call 'the Green Bridge') and did the circuit via Southbank, the city and along the riverside walkway back home, probably 10-12km in all.

We never actually bothered to go to Oxfam because we went to a "Mrs Flannery's organic supermarket" that we passed on the way, and they had fairtrade coffee. Sure it's probably better to buy from Oxfam, but we hate going into the city and getting smoked all over, and it's worst after 4pm. Also picked up some organic dried bananas (cheaper than at the Toowong health food store), some alfalfa seeds (to plant lucerne for Keith Richards- he's pretty much demolished our existing lucerne), some tasty carob-coated ginger for me and a jar of roasted cashews for Gam. We also stopped off at a nice little second hand bookstore- for the life of me I can't remember what it's called- and Gam bought 2 books. I scoped out the kids' section but didn't find anything I particularly wanted. I did spy a nice looking hardcover on Man Ray and another on Helmut Newton, but nothing was really cheap at the store, so I figured they would be out of our budget.

We took a bunch of photos, including a few of the notoriously dangerous North Bank precinct that is just crying out to be trampled over by Multiplex, for the good of us locals, of course.

Guinea fowl feather 'brooch' I picked up from the lakes at UQ.

Possibly the owner of the feather (pic taken a couple of years ago at the lakes).

Some place called the 'Redbrick Hotel' that Gam photographed.

The North Bank area, according to the Queensland government's pro-Multiplex propaganda, is 'perceived' as being dangerous.

No mention of what's going to happen to the local wildlife that rely on the mangroves that are going to be eradicated when Multiplex builds its monstrosity 40m over the river.

Perhaps the heron will decide to hunt for bogans in the proposed olympic swimming pool to be built on top of the river. Or maybe it might just die as a result of having its hunting ground stolen.

Dangerous?

Or peaceful?

People cowering in fear at the North Quay CityCat stop...

I worry more about the road collapsing on our heads than getting mugged... they found a crack in one of those bridges earlier this year.

This is the photo we'll show to our kids when they ask what North Bank used to be like before Peter Beattie allowed Brisbane to be raped up the arse by Multiplex.

I wonder when a member of State government took a walk around North Bank when there was no press conference being held?

UPDATE: There is a Wikipedia article on the North Bank/Northbank development, albeit a woefully inadequate one. It linked to Multiplex's promotional video for North Bank and made absolutely no mention of public opposition to the development. I added a couple of things, and if anyone else knows of useful links that could be added to the Wiki, do Brisbane a favour and edit the 'external links' section to include them, or make suggestions here and I'll add them.

Photos by Sarah & Gam

Looks Like We'll be Voting Liberal...

Where did our river go? That's right, it belongs to Multiplex now!

Ugh.

At the next state elections and only as a second preference. Still, god damn you Peter Beattie and your mob of crooked, bought off kleptocrats for making us do this. We've talked about the North Bank eyesore that the govt. has sold the river to Multiplex to rape. Like you don't have enough money and power already. Leave the river alone, bastards.

Why are we the only QLD bloggers talking about this? There are plenty of Queenslanders and Brisbanites who read this blog. Come on, make a post that we can link to!

Do you want to live here?



Or here?

Brisbane- are they on CRACK???

Going... going... gone, to the highest bidder.

Dear Peter Beattie,

Perhaps now is the time to make a gentle suggestion that you take a trip to see a reputable doctor and have your mental faculties checked. Hire a minibus and take your entire cabinet team with you. Today is February the 14th. Valentine's Day. April 1st isn't for another month and a half. Credit where credit is due- your announcement yesterday would have made a fine April Fool's joke indeed. But the fact that you got the date so wrong has me genuinely worried that you're suffering some kind of cognitive decline. Get checked out. It could be early onset alzheimer's or it might be just some sort of weird psychosis induced by inhaling the body odour of property developers, or perhaps touching one's fork at a fancy restaurant. It's not healthy to spend too much time around those people- you never know what you'll catch.

Yours sincerely,

Sarah.

Building over the fucking Brisbane river. That has to be some kind of joke, right? The north bank development proposal includes building several residential skyscrapers over 30 stories high, an olympic swimming pool, a gym (which will no doubt be used exclusively by the people wealthy enough to afford an apartment in the new buildings) and a huge car park. Right on top of the Brisbane river.

To paraphrase Multiplex director Shane Bulloch:

"Don't worry, the people in cars will still be able to see the sky when they're driving, even if the dark shape of a 37-story building is looming over the roadway from where a river was once visible."

I thought it was bad having a Mayor who is beholden to developers and has an almost perverse obsession with tunnels, now it turns out that Peter Beattie is even worse.

PROMENADES, high-rise buildings, an Olympic swimming pool and cycleways will be built out over the Brisbane River in a radical $1.5 billion plan unveiled yesterday.
Premier Peter Beattie said a "much larger" proposal than was earlier envisaged had won Multiplex Developments Australia preferred bidder status for stage one of the CBD North Bank project. The development will reach 40m into the river, stretching between the William Jolly Bridge and Goodwill Bridge. Stage one will be between the Victoria Bridge and Alice Street.

But the plan is open for community scrutiny and the Government will not commit until it tests "public acceptability" in the next month.

Under the proposal, the spaghetti-like Riverside Expressway would be enclosed on both sides by buildings, but it would not be covered.

Multiplex director Shane Bulloch said drivers on the expressway would still see sky above and mountain vistas.

"The design has really been developed to allow views back over the river, back up to Mt Coot-tha," he said.

Work could start on the project as early as next year and is due for completion in 10 years. Mr Beattie said the Government had required that there be no cost to taxpayers, but he said this was only possible if "significant high-rise development" was allowed.

Multiplex is proposing seven high-rise buildings - the tallest with 37 stories - and a total floorspace of about 230,000sqm, of which about half would be residential. About 100,000sqm would be offices. A 300-room hotel also is included in the plan.

Opposition infrastructure spokesman Bruce Flegg said the plan did nothing to improve the look of the freeway.

Infrastructure Minister Anna Bligh said the Government wanted the public's view on the plan before endorsing it.