CUTTING-EDGE SMARTS FOR COAST
IT’S arguably the Gold Coast’s biggest legacy game-changer from the Commonwealth Games – a multibillion-dollar medical research and technology hub attracting some of the world’s brightest minds.
The Gold Coast Health and Knowledge Precinct at Parklands, of which the $550 million Games athletes village will become the centrepiece, is set to lead the transformation of the Glitter Strip from a city reliant on tourism and construction to one renowned for its cutting-edge smarts.
A joint strategy of the State Government, Gold Coast City Council and Griffith University, the precinct is rapidly taking shape on a 200ha site, with world-leading medical research already under way.
It already features $5 billion in infrastructure, including the $1.8 billion Gold Coast University Hospital, the $500 million Coast campus of Griffith University and $232 million Gold Coast Private Hospital. A $25 million boutique hotel is being developed at the adjoining Southport Sharks AFL club to lure international conferences.
Serviced by its own highspeed fibre optic internet cable and the light-rail, the precinct will incorporate 15 development sites being pitched internationally to research and technology companies.
One of the sites is earmarked for Griffith’s $80 million Advanced Design and Manufacturing Institute, where human body parts and tissue will be recreated using 3D printing.
The precinct already employs about 10,000 workers and has 20,000 students at the university, the largest of Griffith’s five southeast Queensland campuses.
When fully developed, the precinct is expected to inject $2.9 billion into the Coast economy and employ 26,000 people.
After the Games, the athletes village – owned by the Abu Dhabi Investment Council and comprising 1252 apartments and townhouses, as well as retail space – will become accommodation for precinct workers and students.
Leading medicos and academics are collaborating at the precinct on world-leading biomedical research.
They include renowned Professor Mark von Itzstein, director of Griffith University’s Institute for Glycomics and coinventor of the world’s first anti-flu drug.
“The Gold coast is now establishing itself as a biomedical research hub,” Prof von Itzstein said. “Within the next 10 years, I have no doubt that the Gold Coast Health and Knowledge Precinct will be seen as a worldleading research precinct.”
Griffith’s senior deputy vice chancellor Professor Ned Pankhurst said the precinct was shaping up to be “world-class”.
“You don’t get many opportunities like this in a lifetime,” he said. “We have a truly wonderful opportunity to lead high-technology industries for Australia and the world. We think it’s a perfect storm of innovation.”