RIGHT UP YOUR STREET
Abbott St to become the flashiest place in the Cairns CBD
ONE of the oldest streets in the Cairns CBD is set to become the jewel in the city’s crown.
A series of private and public investments will make the historic boulevard dazzle, from facelifts and streetscaping works to new developments, including retail, dining and hotel drawcards.
IT’S DEFINITELY NOT A DEVELOPMENT BOOM, BUT IT IS A BLOODY SIGNIFICANT CONTRIBUTION TO THE CITY WHEN YOU SEE THESE NEW HOTELS MAYOR BOB MANNING
A CONSTRUCTION surge in the city centre is getting noticed by big-name developers with itchy trigger fingers and money in the bank.
Abbott St has taken centrestage in the architectural revival with a suite of private and government projects promising to revamp a tired stretch of the Cairns Central Business District.
The spike begins with property investor Frank Gasparin’s million-dollar revamp of a building at the corner of Abbott and Spence streets and his major renovations and luxury retail expansion at DFS Galleria across the road. A few doors down and the microbar moguls from Three Wolves are about to open a new gin distillery in their laneway.
Walk barely 20m further along Abbott St and the Kamsler brothers are midway through transforming the former dilapidated Sejumi Institute building beside the old Courthouse Hotel into a new office, retail and dining drawcard for the city. Its cost is under wraps but it features a “perforated aluminium curtain” worth $1 million, giving some indication of the quality of work.
The former Courthouse Hotel next door was earmarked for a $3.6 million refurbishment in the Cairns Regional Council’s 2019-20 Budget – paving the way for its metamorphosis into part of a $40 million Cairns Gallery Precinct once funding can be found. Preston Law partner Tim Dobinson plans to convert the
current Katies Centre across the road into an “entertainment arcade” after buying the old building for $7 million in January.
The council has $16.5 million set aside to beautify Shields St from Abbott St to the Esplanade over the next two years, and to redevelop the Esplanade dining precinct, and $832,000 for footpath and landscaping upgrades between Spence and Wharf streets and beside DFS Galleria.
It has also committed $10 million over two years to transform Florence St into a masterplanned pedestrian link between the Munro Martin Parklands, the aquarium and the cultural precinct beyond – including the Centre for Contemporary Arts, currently undergoing a $5 million facelift. Then there are Crystalbrook Collection’s three 5-star hotel projects worth a combined $370 million, not to mention Rattle ’n Hum’s new multistorey hostel and the pending construction of the 76-room Esplanade Central hotel above McDonald’s, worth $10 million.
Mayor Bob Manning said the upsurge in activity could not help but be noticed by the likes of Singaporean development giant Aspial, which had been waiting for the right time
to build its $550 million Nova City tower project.
“Nova City will be looking at us now and starting to think about things,” he said.
“I’ve had people in the last couple of days visit and ask about the ‘development boom’.
“No, it’s definitely not a development boom, but it is a bloody significant contribution to the city when you see these new hotels – I think they are absolute stunners.
“We’ve got things to work off which not a lot of regional cities have at the moment.”
Cr Manning hinted at several other exciting and largescale developments yet to go public – potentially elevating the current upswing into the boom everybody was waiting for.
“Let me just say there’s a couple of sizeable ones out there that are in the early stages,” he said.
“In my opinion, they are real.”