Courting a new era

Mayor calls for designs

COUNCIL officers will come up with designs for a Gold Coast Supreme Court in a bid to generate support among the city’s movers and shakers.

The project, earmarked for Southport’s Mal Burke Car Park in Hind St, would include both a court and chambers for barristers and has been pitched to the State Government by the council as a joint venture.

Undeterred by the State Government’s lack of plans for a Supreme Court on the Coast, Mayor Tom Tate said a design would be created by the city architect as the next step towards making the project a reality.

“I will get our architect to come up with a concept and take it to council and show them that we want to lobby the State Government to be involved in this,” he said.

“From there we will develop a funding package and then we can move ahead with it.

“It is early days but it does not hurt to find out if people like the idea.”

Cr Tate wrote to State Planning Minister Cameron Dick in September pitching the idea of a Supreme Court on the Gold Coast following a campaign by the Gold Coast Bulletin and a successful two-week trial of sittings at Southport in August.

The Mayor has also proposed a Gold Coast version of Brisbane’s so-called “Tower of Power’’, which he says could be built on the site of the existing Southport Library and Athol Paterson Car Park.

This highrise, expected to be worth between $80$300 million, would house council bureaucrats as well as locally based State Government workers.

Figures provided to the Bulletin show 14 state agencies are spread across 48 separate tenancies on the Gold Coast, for a total floor space of 29,000sq m.

Business and political leaders have backed the concept, saying it would allow those offices to be consolidated, take traffic off the M1 and also help activate billions of dollars of stalled development in Southport.