Allowed to run down
Council accused of car park neglect
THE Gold Coast City Council is accused of deliberately running down the Bruce Bishop car park in Surfers Paradise so it can sell the major ratepayer asset.
The Bulletin has obtained documents that show the council as early as September 2015 received a structure inspection report outlining concrete cancer on car park floors.
At its most recent budget review meeting, council voted to spend $4.2 million to complete repair works by June next year after its estimate for work was downgraded from $13.6 million to $7.9 million.
Despite council moving forward with the sale, engineering and budget documents reveal:
The car park made a profit of $4.25 million from 2012 to 2018, and expects to get a return of $940,000 this year.
Occupancy figures show 1260 vehicles use the car park daily on average, not the “approximately 1000 vehicles” stated by a council CEO report.
Photographs taken by consultants in 2015 show about five downpipes discharging water directly into building spaces and “numerous drainage outlets were blocked” causing water to pond on floors.
Water leaking through an upper slab has leeched the concrete causing it to rust the sprinkler system.
Despite the faults, the building built in the early 1990s at a cost of more than $17 million has a design life of 40 to 60 years.
In July 2011 the car park had a balance of just more than $2 million, which remained intact since 2011.
Retired property demographer and development consultant Alan Midwood believes the building could last until 2050.
“There was one area where the post tension cables were exposed. This sounded alarm bells and council engaged Cardno to check all the floor slabs,” he said.
But after 54 locations were tested it was found “only one … showed some corrosion of the actual tendons”.
Work on fixing up the building varied from 38 per cent in upper basement one to 86 per cent in basement four but “in most cases it would be patching a relatively minor case of concrete cancer”.
“All building owners know that maintenance is an inevitable annual cost, which makes it all the more surprising that this one has not been regularly maintained,” Mr Midwood said.
Save Surfers Paradise (SSP) secretary Deborah Kelly told the Bulletin: “A considerable amount of the damage appears to have arisen from blocked drains and other drainage issues that are apparent even to the untrained eye and these problems have been left unaddressed for years”.
Ms Kelly said it was difficult not to think the building had fallen into disrepair “in order to justify the sale decision”.
SSP is preparing a legal fight to stop the sale because it believes the loss of the car park will force staff to leave jobs in Surfers and impact on the RSL and surf club.
A council spokesperson said council was on notice that “legal proceedings were anticipated against it” and it would be inappropriate to comment further.