Businesses in race to be Games-ready
MORE than 3000 Gold Coast businesses have already embraced creating a Commonwealth Games survival plan. As for those that haven’t? “Day one of the Games is too late to be trialling what you’re going to do,” said Rose McArthur, council’s Get Set for the Games technical director and a global expert in preparing cities for such events.
“If businesses haven’t started thinking about this, they really need to do it quick sharp.
“Everyone knows it’s going to be a challenge during the Games. We know what the M1 is like now and we’ve got an additional six million trips to be made during the Games.
“They have to fit somewhere and we know businesses
are one of the biggest groups we can work with to make sure we’re using our transport networks effectively.”
Ms McArthur, who worked on the 2012 London Olympics and 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games, has spent three years working towards ensuring every GC2018 spectator walks, cycles or catches public transport to events.
Given its impact on the city, the business community has been a major focus for her 40person team, with countless one-on-one briefings and location and industry-specific workshops being held to ready it for the reality that lies ahead.
“Something I’ve learned in my career is the only way you can build the trust of the business audience is to be honest, transparent and totally committed to them,” Ms McArthur said.
“I can’t tell you how aweinspiring (the Gold Coast) response to this challenge has been ... they’ve said to me ‘A problem is only a problem if we don’t know it’s coming’.
“There are people coming back to us saying ‘I could do this’ or ‘What do you think of this plan’. We’ve got case studies coming out of our ears.”
That includes the Centrelink manager who has mapped where his staff live and plans to assign them to an office within walking or cycling distance of their homes during the Games.
“He’s probably taken about 9000 non-essential trips off the (road) network, which can now be made by the doctor responding to an emergency or get the milk and coffee (delivery) to a cafe so small business owners are making as much money from the Games as possible,” Ms McArthur said.