An Independent Campaign
Well, this is it. Your view of your river from the so-called RiverWalk at Mirvac’s Waterfront project down at Newstead. Sorry, what’s that. You can’t see it? There it is, over on the right of this four-shot composite picture. A sliver of your river, so soak it up, take it in, enjoy it because it’s rightly yours.
Of course at the moment, what you’re mainly seeing is Mirvac’s Pier South building, where well-to-do folk spent a motza buying apartments that boast a view of the river uncluttered by the presence of the great unwashed in front of them. Yes, how tacky would that have been? Imagine having to share their river with Brisbanites out enjoying themselves on foot, on bike or blades, occasionally calling out to each other or their pets. Simply having fun.
Would have been bloody well near intolerable, don’t you think? Okay, enough of the dripping sarcasm. We’ve said it in the past that how Mirvac managed to privatise part of the river so they could charge much, much more for apartments there compared with the sister block, Pier North, is really no longer the point. It shouldn’t have happened but using council bylaws as they existed, it did. End of story.
The Indie’s only aim now is to get candidates and existing councillors for next year’s municipal poll to pledge themselves to building the “ missing link” in front of Pier South, thereby giving the river back to the people of Brisbane.
The argument is, to our minds, powerful and irrefutable. The only drawback could be the cost of building the thing, but we believe it would not be excessive. We point to the enthusiasm with which city council wants to rebuild the main RiverWalk alongside the Valley/New Farm sections of the river, and how much public goodwill former Lord Mayor Campbell Newman milked when he completed a missing link of RiverWalk several years ago between Waterfront and the Brisbane Powerhouse.
We’re no costing experts, but we suspect that piece of infrastructure cost a lot more than ratepayers would outlay to drive some pylons into the riverbed and throw a hundred metres of concrete boardwalk and railings along the front of South Pier.
Will resident of South Pier be upset when this happens? Well, sure. If we at The Indie had forked out the amounts they have for their apartments, our noses would be out of joint too. But equally so, our argument is, bluntly, bad luck to them. And if they want to blame someone, blame Mirvac for doing it that way in the first place.
What will make The Indie proud of this campaign when – and not if – it is realised is that it will set in stone once and for all an underlying principle for anyone who wants to build on the river – they must put the people of Brisbane first.
Maybe this will be known in future as the Mirvac principle: a clear warning to anyone developing anywhere along our river that any design must include a riverwalk on the river in front of their projects.
A case in point is the nearby stretch of unformed footpath between the Waterfront project and Commercial Road which, at present, is a high-risk area especially for parents with young children. This probably will be the next stretch of riverside property where a riverwalk should and must be constructed once the current industrial users move out. Hopefully, the Mirvac principle will be well enshrined by then and whoever develops that area will understand their duty to all the residents of Brisbane. Only then will we be on our way to achieving the ultimate goal – a public river walkway from Newstead House all the way back into the CBD – and beyond.
