Evandale Update
No river or lake change in
cultural and civic precinct project
There will be no deviation of the Nerang River, the lake will remain, and the community will be informed and its comment sought throughout the project. This is the unambiguous message of Gold Coast Mayor Ron Clarke in his latest assessment of progress on the city’s cultural and civic project at Evandale.
“I want to emphasize that we are involved with a staged process to evolve a cultural centre worthy of the Gold Coast and that Council will continue to adhere to this process. “Its first stage was the acknowledgment that the city needed a top class cultural and civic precinct. This is a sentiment that was expressed very strongly by Gold Coasters in our Bold Future survey.
“Since then we have had our ideas competition and sought public comment via our ideas website. Now we are at the stage in the process where our precinct taskforce is preparing a vision and design brief to go to Council . That will be used as a basis for the preparation of a project master plan.
“It has been incorrectly claimed that the outcomes of the ideas competition have been adopted as the final design. We had some genuinely outstanding entries in the ideas competition and these are assisting us define the major elements for the future design, but let me assure residents no plan has been adopted.
“The task force already has expressed a desire that the new precinct facilities will be restructured on the current built environment and car park west of the lake.” Cr Clarke said that once the master plan had evolved, there would then be ample opportunity for the community to view it and offer comment.
“The master plan will go on display at the Council Chambers in Evandale, as well as other Council facilities such as libraries and these venues will provide an opportunity for the public to have their say. We do not expect this to occur until mid-year. “We will have the master plan displayed on our website which will provide a further mechanism for public comment.
“There is still a long way to go in this process and we will continue to welcome and value all comment that comes from the community, but we ask residents to be patient and reserve their judgments until this proposed master plan has been developed.”