SE Queensland development pre Olympics 2032

[Scooter]

Yet to be formally confirmed southeast Queensland has all but won the bid for the 2032 Olympics. The games will use venues between the sunshine and gold coasts, creating a super Olympic city. 
Several theme parks are in this belt and I presume will want to attract some of the extra influx of tourists and possibly get free advertising being part of the backdrop during the games. 
 

Do you see the parks expanding and adding new ride in the build up to 2032?

Could a brand new park be built in that time?

It’s a long way off but I think the parks will certainly use the time to their advantage.

[Brad2912]

I’d say regardless of the Olympics all parks would have several additions planned over the next decade and their long term plans wouldn’t be overly swayed or altered based on it. 
 

I imagine AO and PC would have an exponential increase in attendance from international visitors. 

[Gazza]

I don't reckon they will. The Olympics will likely suck up all the hotel capacity and people won't have time to visit the parks.

Will be Commonwealth Games situation 2.0

[Slick]

Broadly speaking, I'm very cautiously optimistic about the Olympics coming to Brisbane in general. The IOC are moving away from a host-city to a host-region model as part of their "2020 remodelling" strategy after the viability of the Olympics came into question. The government seems to think the games will pay for themselves, but that's also something that's been heard all before.

If a developer were to time it right, there's a great opportunity to strike with a Brisbane or Sunshine coast based theme park that has the potential to really leverage the Olympics for long term exposure, but beyond that I don't see the Olympics moving the needle enough for specific tourism operators to benefit wildly after the games are over. Like @Gazzasaid, with the Commonwealth Games, the messaging was so strong about transport and roads being congested that everyone avoided the Comm Games like the plague and the polar opposite happened.

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

17 hours ago, Gazza said:

I don't reckon they will. The Olympics will likely suck up all the hotel capacity and people won't have time to visit the parks.

Will be Commonwealth Games situation 2.0

Yeah I think they need to encourage people to come and join the party, rather than warn them away.

Sydney is the perfect example of how to host the games - venues spread all over Sydney's greater metropolitan - right to the blue mountains, as far south as campbelltown and everywhere in between. Every 'event host' city council had their own little expos to encourage tourism and visitation. I personally worked on the expo put on by Penrith City, with the rowing and whitewater venues, and the equestrian events just down the highway. Homebush was a non-stop party, and Sydney did an excellent job of managing the transport requirements.

Sydney also didn't suffer the 'white elephant' venue problem that many other countries have experienced - a new stadium that became regularly used as a home ground for several sport clubs, coupled with the ancillary venues surrounding it that is regularly used for events, concerts, the royal easter show etc. Many of the other venues continue to see regular use today including the baseball fields, equestrian centre and regatta centre. Even the athletes village was quickly converted into much needed housing for the area. (and the OLYMPIC LOGISTICS CENTRE SALES WERE CRAAAAAZAAAAAY! (Anyone remember those ads?))

The biggest thing that Brisbane (and the greater surrounds including the Sunshine and Gold Coasts) needs is transport infrastructure to manage the load. Our current train network is abysmal. The busways are ok, but the Pac motorway and the Bruce Highway aren't up to coping with any massive amounts of additional traffic the moment someone drops a spanner in the works.

Everything for Brisbane is geared around the Brisbane CBD - if i'm in Coopers Plains and I want to travel to Darra - a train needs to go all the way to Roma St for me to interchange with the Ipswich or Springfield line. Everything is a line straight to the city. All of the interchange stations are one of the central areas close to the river, ergo the CBD.

Honestly - relocating the Ekka into a greenfields space - perhaps up near boondall near the entertainment centre - doing a 'homebush' and creating a space that is - connected to arterial highways, out of the city gridlock, able to be easily connected to public transport hubs, and you're on a winner. Build a stadium and an arena, as well as supporting facilities to host a multitude of events (oh, and it won't flood like Suncorp)

At least in Sydney, you can pretty much get anywhere on the network without going through the city if you need to.

On topic - as Brad mentioned i'm fairly certain the parks will continue to add their usual attractions, although timing the opening of something close to the games wouldn't be a horrible idea.

Wonderland did see an uptick in visitation during the games - but they were using the Wonderland carpark as park-and-ride parking for other event venues too. I think overall, tourism does see an increase - athletes, and their supporters are usually in town for the duration of the 2-3 weeks of the games (and more in preparation) but their events don't usually last the entire games, so they have a lot of time to explore - especially the fans who don't have to worry about training.

TL:DR - Sydney was an absolute party, non stop, for the entire duration of the games. Everyone got on board, and there was no messaging to stay away, because the infrastructure could handle the load. They did everything right (although they started with a pretty good public transport network to begin with) and everything was designed for more than a single event use.

[Gazza]

Yeah, I've thought that the Ekka should go to Boondall. The current site in Bowen Hills has been cut up so much now that there isn't enough space for rides, and the pavillions are depressing because they now just use the undercroft of the multi level car park.

I'm not sure if we'll ever see a shift away from the CBD focus Brisbane has for a little while yet. Sydney at least has decent satellite CBDs such as North Sydney, Chatswood, Paramatta and to a lesser extent Macquarie Park, Kogarah etc which drives the construction of crosstown lines (And even the Sydney ones only ever did "okay") . At best, Brisbane has the likes of Garden City, Chermside etc, which are basically Westfields with a couple of low rise office towers, so not yet strong enough to anchor such lines.

Not in the league of your Paramattas, and to be honest, not even a Burwood.

 

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

21 minutes ago, Gazza said:

not even a Burwood

Having worked in Burwood (albeit over 15 years ago) I would consider it on par with the Chermside of today - the differences you may observe though are because Burwood is located on a major arterial transport corridor - both rail and road. People can travel to Burwood from anywhere on the rail network and simply change at Strathfield (as I did). You can't build high rise office towers without either: 1 - massive amounts of parking and great arterial roads, or 2 - a great transport service.

I've worked in both Chermside and Upper Mount Gravatt, and the parking situation in both is abysmal, as are the arterial roads surrounding them in peak times. The lack of a direct rail connection to either further exacerbates that, as those that don't drive are relying on buses that are slower, less direct, and are impacted by the same traffic snarls the car drivers do.

The satellites in Sydney you refer to all had a rail line before they became the satellites they are today. You can't put the cart before the horse.

[rappa]

After attending the Sydney Easter Show yesterday in the ‘new’ Showground. 
Please never move the Ekka. God what a soulless crap hole of no shade and no atmosphere the Sydney event is. I had forgotten. 

[Ashley Jeffery]

4 hours ago, rappa said:

After attending the Sydney Easter Show yesterday in the ‘new’ Showground. 
Please never move the Ekka. God what a soulless crap hole of no shade and no atmosphere the Sydney event is. I had forgotten. 

Have you been to the ekka lately?

[Jobe]

5 hours ago, rappa said:

After attending the Sydney Easter Show yesterday in the ‘new’ Showground. 
Please never move the Ekka. God what a soulless crap hole of no shade and no atmosphere the Sydney event is. I had forgotten. 

I dont think that the RES is devoid of atmosphere.I visited today and had an awesome time- there was plenty of atmosphere from my perspective.

[rappa]

13 hours ago, Ashley Jeffery said:

Have you been to the ekka lately?

Yes and it still has plenty of quiet spots you can still sit for a drink, get away from crazy crowds and has a bit of a rural feel. Its homely I guess. 
I’d hate to see it go the way of Sydney’s showground. 

[Jdude95]

8 hours ago, rappa said:

Yes and it still has plenty of quiet spots you can still sit for a drink, get away from crazy crowds and has a bit of a rural feel. Its homely I guess. 
I’d hate to see it go the way of Sydney’s showground. 

I'm terrified to see what the Ekka will be in 5-10 years time with the continued developments that keep popping up in the RNA

[Ashley Jeffery]

1 hour ago, Jdude95 said:

I'm terrified to see what the Ekka will be in 5-10 years time with the continued developments that keep popping up in the RNA

Still holding out for the "temporary" showbag tent to be removed so we have a proper sideshow alley.

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

Yeah it's been a while since i've been to the RES, but I still prefer it to Ekka. I had the opportunity to visit Ekka before they developed the old showbag hall into event space and erected the permanent temporary monstrosity - so i've seen both of its two most recent incarnations.

As for my opinion on how the grounds stand today, they are a shell of what they once were. The entire precinct is choked by the railway bifurcation, funnelling everyone through two relatively narrow thoroughfares. Between this and the land sell-offs, areas are fragmented - splitting similar areas of interest off from each other and moving them to other places to accommodate them. It becomes even harder to navigate closer to the evening when EkkaNites starts as the vomatorium for the arena feeds into one of two major routes to get around the grounds, choking that passage, with little alternative.

The grounds on a whole are hilly, and to get around to see everything you're essentially hill climbing all day long.

The 'public transport' accessibility to the Ekka relies primarily on the Exhibition loop line, meaning that although it is capable of moving large amounts of people out of the precinct, it dumps them at a metropolitan station that is busy enough without exhibition traffic, requiring an interchange - so that just makes it worse.

Unfortunately the earliest images for the RNA grounds on Nearmap are October 2009, and although some development had already occurred, you can see the land selloff continued throughout the past decade:

October 2009 (oldest image)

August 2012 (during Ekka)

August 2018 (during Ekka)

March 2021 (most recent)

[Jdude95]

Each year we keep getting a bigger shoehorn 

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

..and a smaller shoe

Edited April 7, 2021 by DaptoFunlandGuy