By Mitch Gaynor
YOU have to give credit where it is due for the visionaries behind the proposed $2.6 billion Elimbah ‘Infinity Planet’ development.
Something calling itself “Australia’s largest purpose-built integrated entertainment city” promises 900 hotel rooms ranging from 3 to 5-star accommodation, a 9000-seat city hall venue, “internationally themed” retail, a business and technology park, and a Disneyland-style theme park.
Put it all together and you arrive at what CEO and Founder Ramin Ahmadi describes as a “permanent world expo” that he believes would attract nearly 2 million visitors a year, including 800,000 international tourists.
All of this is proposed for a site beside the Bruce Highway at humble (for now) Elimbah, which would give up around 150 hectares of farming land.
That’s the collateral damage in the race to entertain, house, and occupy the hearts and minds of another 300,000 people in the Moreton Bay region and across the Sunshine Coast, not to mention the wider south east.
If you are feeling a touch cynical, you are not alone.
That may be partly because we have all seen plenty of glossy, big-picture concept renders in recent years that never moved beyond the rhetoric.
This one certainly stands out, with its Vegas-bright, Panopticon-meets-Disneyland illustrations.
There were no guardrails on the superlatives thrown up by Mr Ahmadi last week, who declared: “We are creating a world of endless possibilities, which will bring together people from around the world to celebrate the best aspects of humanity and nature.”
Alrighty then.
Even so, it is an intriguing concept and the ‘infinity planets’ seem to be aligning for this kind of large-scale thinking.
Moreton Bay City Council has recently launched a public consultation process for Elimbah, years after the state government identified the area as a key growth corridor for housing and business development.
“Over time, new houses and businesses may be introduced to meet the needs of the growing population,” the council states on its website.
That’s now quite the understatement considering the scale of this project.
It makes the development appear like a very large cart coming before the horse, especially given that council insists it is still in the “very early stages” of preparing a long-term plan to guide the growth of Elimbah.
Amid all the noise surrounding this mega-development, you may have missed that council has actually opened public consultation for the Elimbah SEQ Development Area.
The window runs from Nov 3 to 28, so time is limited.
A cynic might wonder how much effort is truly going into informing the community about this process.
Do they genuinely want community input?
Or are we all simply expected to strap in to go to infinity and beyond?