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I love living on the Gold Coast. I have lived here for about 30 years, and I love the lifestyle the weather, the people and the ease of living here. Many people, however are doing a fairly tough. Our economy, based largely on tourism and construction has taken a bit of a battering over the last few years, particularly since the GFC.
Once again GCCC has plan to revamp surfers paradise. The Mayor has another idea this time about Zip cars. Council’s new headquarters is supposedly going out to Robina. There is also some talk of having a Chinatown in Southport.
As you can see from all of these issues one of the problems with the Gold Coast is that there is no “heart of the city”. There is no CBD. Zip cars are intended to get people around a busy CBD. We don’t have one. We don’t have a City Hall. We don’t even have a Civic Centre. We have the entertainment Centre which is marvellous, but there is no real city centre.
We want tourists to come to the Gold Coast, but what do we offer apart from beaches, theme parks and some “green behind the gold” all of which can be had elsewhere. What differentiates the Gold Coast?
What is the first thing you do when you go to a new city or town that you’ve come to visit? You may have a tour organised to see the sites, you might go for a wander around, you go past City Hall or the town Hall, you see the Civic Centre. There is usually a public art gallery that you can attend, sometimes a public library, maybe a tourist centre.
There is nearly always some type of historical centre run by either Council staff, library staff or volunteers but we can get an idea of what the place is about where it’s come from what it stands for and where it’s headed.
Then if it is a coastal area you normally go for a walk along the pier. You know that thing that juts out into the ocean that people fish from, roller blade on, tourists walk along having ice creams. And you walk right at the end of the pier and the look out into the ocean and you see all the people out on their boats and all the surfers in the water, and then you turnaround to walk back and you look at the city from the water and see how beautiful it is. You do that in places all round the world. You do it till long you do it in numerous places around the bay in Victoria, in Brighton in England Glenelg in Adelaide. It’s a wonderful experience for tourists. Yes you are going to tell me we have a pier here at main beach. The only problem with that is you have to go through a wire cage to get to it and you have to pay for the privilege for goodness sake.
We need to decide what our city is about and what is stands for. We have the Bold Future initiative from the Council, which provides us with some direction in the long term. Now we need to think about our culture and providing ourselves with a real tourist “heart of the city,” a focal point that differentiates us, so that when tourists reach it, they know that they are there.
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