TAFE SITE AN ASSET WASTE

THE fact a prime piece of land like the old TAFE campus in Southport has been chained up and left dormant for almost a decade is a slight on bureaucracy.

What’s worse is it is costing taxpayers $500,000 a year in security and to cut grass while politicians and government fat cats dither over what to do with the site.

Ridgeway Ave is not a backward outpost in Woop Woop. It is in the vicinity of the city’s CBD. The site covers 3.27 hectares and in 2014 was estimated to be worth $3 million.

Yet is it costing the public purse $10,000 a week to maintain. The logic, or the lack of it, is dumbfounding.

As the population swells and demands for services increase, the Gold Coast is screaming out for valuable land to turn into community assets. We have that land in one of our most established suburbs, but it is being left to rot.

In 2014, the State Government ruled out gifting the unused campus to the Gold Coast City Council. The move angered city leaders who were planning to use the land to house a series of community groups for Southport residents.

The Newman government at the time said it would consider selling the land to council without a discount.

State Government sources this week said the council was offered the site but showed “little interest”. Negotiations with other parties have proved unsuccessful. The Gold Coast City Council says it “has not received an offer”. One of them is bending the truth.

Southport residents have lobbied governments for years for the property to be recommissioned into a working, viable community asset. They are still sitting next to the phone.

Resident spokeswoman Judith de Boer said she had been trying for close to a decade to get resolution. It included two meetings with Premiers. “There is no movement. We have dealt with five governments over that time from department to department into the bowels of the education property portfolio,” she said.

In the meantime, the community is being left to suffer. As each month passes another $40,000 is tipped down the drain to look after the eyesore. Imagine how that money could be used to ease the pain and stress for some of the city’s most vulnerable.